Robert D. Hatcher

Robert Dean Hatcher Jr. (born October 22, 1940, in Madison, Tennessee) is an American structural geologist, known as one of the world's leading experts on the geology of the southern and central Appalachians.

Biography

Hatcher attended high school at Springfield, Ohio's Northwestern High School, where he graduated in 1957. At Vanderbilt University, he graduated in 1961 with a B.A. (major in geology and chemistry, minor in mathematics) and in 1962 with a M.S. (major in geology, minor in chemistry). In 1965 he received a Ph.D. in structural geology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) with thesis supervised by George David Swingle (1922–1973). In 1965 Hatcher married Diana Simpson. After about one year as an employee of the Humble Oil and Refining Company (now merged into ExxonMobil), he was appointed an assistant professor at Clemson University. There he was promoted to full professor and taught geology and mineralogy from 1966 to 1979. He and his family in 1978 moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where he was appointed a professor of geology at Florida State University and in 1980 moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he was a professor until 1988 at the University of South Carolina. In 1986 he returned to Tennessee, where he accepted a joint appointment at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as Distinguished Scientist and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences.