B. Clark Burchfiel

Burrell Clark Burchfiel ( born March 21, 1934 in Stockton, California) is an American geologist.

Burchfiel graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in 1957 and a master's degree in 1958 and in 1961 received his doctorate from Yale University in geology. He was short with the United States Geological Survey and from 1961 assistant professor and later professor of geology at Rice University. In 1968 he was an exchange professor in Belgrade and 1970 in Bucharest. From 1977 he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( Schlumberger Professor of Geology ). He has been a visiting professor at the Australian National University ( 1976), Lund University (1992) and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences ( 1990).

He is concerned with the tectonics of the western United States, China, Eastern Europe and Tibet in the context of plate tectonics. Since 1985 he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. 1985/86 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1997 he became a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he was president of the Geological Society of America. In 2009 he received the Penrose Medal.

4820
de