Hisashi Kuno


Hisashi Kuno was professor at the Institute of Geology, University of Tokyo. He was first son of Kamenosuke Kuno and Tome Kuno.

Life

There was a field excursion after the 1930 North Izu earthquake southwest of Tokyo. This resulted that his life work was the petrology of the Izu-Hakone region, the basaltic magmas and the crystallization of pyroxenes. He graduated at University of Tokyo in 1932 and became assistant professor in 1939. He was drafted into the army during World War II in July 1941. He was stationed in the Manchuria and he could study the geology and mineralogy of pegmatites and several basalt plateaus there. He received his doctor of science in 1948. He visited the United States in 1951–52 and worked with professor Harry H. Hess at Princeton University. He was appointed professor of the Institute of Geology in 1955.
When the Wadati–Benioff zone is less than 200 km deep, tholeiitic basalt magmas are produced. At intermediate depths high-alumina basalt magmas are formed and at depths greater than 250 km alkali olivine basalt ones. Hisashi Kuno contributed to unfold this causal correlation.
He received the Japan Academy Award. He was president of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior during the period 1963–1967, and vice-president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and for the International Union of Geological Sciences at the time of his death. The Kuno Cirque, Read Mountains, Shackleton Range, Antarctica was named in his honour.

Selected publications