Marcel Alexandre Bertrand

Marcel Alexandre Bertrand (1847 to 1907) was a French geologist born in Paris, the son of the mathematician Joseph Louis François Bertrand. He studied at the École Polytechnique and from 1869 at the École des Mines de Paris, and from 1877 carried out geological mapping studies of Provence, the Jura Mountains and the Alps. A founder of modern tectonics, he originated an orogenic wave theory of mountain building, in which massive folds built up over successive geological eras called the Caledonian, Hercynian and Alpine periods of orogeny, and later added a fourth, the Huronian orogeny of Precambrian time. He also introduced the nappe hypothesis. He became an instructor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in 1886, president of the Société géologique de France in 1890 and a member of the Académie des sciences in 1896.