Lynn Gelhar

Gelhar is recognized as a leading authority on stochastic subsurface hydrology. In 1982 he received the American Geophysical Union's Horton Award in recognition of his pioneering work in stochastic subsurface hydrology, in 1983 was elected a Fellow in the American Geophysical Union, cited particularly for work in stochastic methods, and in 1987 he was the recipient of the O. E. Meinzer Award by the Geological Society of America for three papers dealing with stochastic methods. He is the author of the textbook Stochastic Subsurface Hydrology(1993), and has authored 160 technical publications. He has broad experience in fundamental and applied water-related research, but is best known for his theoretical work describing contaminant transport in naturally heterogenous aquifers using stochastic methods. He has also been instrumental in developing large-scale long-term field experiments designed to evaluate the new theoretical results, including field sites on Cape Cod, near Columbus, Mississippi, and a vadose zone site in the New Mexico desert near Las Cruces. His review of worldwide data on field-scale dispersion in aquifers is frequently cited in applied investigations aquifer contamination. His publications are widely cited, as reflected by his inclusion in the 2001 ISI Highly Cited list of scientists in Engineering and in Ecology/Environment. In Google Scholar he is credited with more than 16,000 citations, being the most highly cited individual in the field of Groundwater Hydrology.

In 1964 he joined the faculty of the Department of Civil Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1969. In 1973 he joined the faculty of the Geoscience Department at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT); as Professor of Hydrology he coordinated of the graduate program in hydrology. In 1983 he returned to MIT as full Professor, and retired in 1996, becoming Professor Emeritus while continuing to direct graduate student research. Sabbatical leaves included visits at Stanford University (1971), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (1978), Ecole des Mines de Paris (1978), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, Stockholm) (1986), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (1986), University of Western Australia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (Perth) (1987), Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1993) and King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, (2012).

Lynn Walter Gelhar (born 1936) is an American civil engineer focusing in hydrology and is currently Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is recognized for pioneering research in stochastic subsurface hydrology, has leading research in the area of field-scale contaminant transport experiments, and has extensive experience on the hydrologic aspects of nuclear waste disposal.

Gelhar was born in 1936 in the central Wisconsin sand country (A Sand County Almanac) . He grew up in the small agricultural village of Oakfield, Wisconsin located at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, graduating from Oakfield High School in 1954. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, specializing at the graduate level in hydrology and fluid mechanics, with minors in mathematics and meteorology; his doctorate was completed in 1964. During his graduate study he also worked with the Soil Conservation Service(USDA) on design of water control structures and at Fairbanks-Morse & Co. on large pumping systems for flood control and water supply projects.