Luna Leopold — hydrologist, UC professor, dies at 90
From SFGate.com and the fine folks over at Infospigot.
Luna Leopold, a naturalist considered the nation’s leading expert and educator on how rivers shape the land, died at his home in Berkeley on Feb. 23. He was 90 and had been suffering from heart and lung problems, said his care giver, Cathy Zimmerman.
Mr. Leopold was the son of Aldo Leopold, the pioneering conservationist who made wildlife management a national ethic with his 1949 anthology “A Sand County Almanac.” Born in the river-carved Southwest, Luna Leopold extended his father’s ecological philosophy into the field of geomorphology — the study of how landforms are made by the action of water. His research led to quantitative explanations for the natural forms of rivers.
Notably productive until his final weeks, Mr. Leopold published some 200 books and articles and received more than 40 awards during a lifetime that included careers as the chief hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a professor at UC Berkeley. Since 1987, he had been a Cal professor emeritus and was seen working in the university’s earth sciences library as recently as a month ago. During his last year, he published articles and a book.
“In his field, he absolutely was the most fundamental person,” said James Kirchner, a Cal professor of earth and planetary sciences. “He wrote the original book in the field.
“He was a theorist and experimenter,” Kirchner said. “He was in many respects the consummate scientist. You almost never get both in the same package at that level.”
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