Professor Ghislain de Marsily pictured right, in discussion with Professor Giovanni Baroccu (Rome 2015)
Ghislain de Marsily
As an integral part of the 60th anniversary celebrations at the 43rd IAH Congress in Montpellier, two of the IAH Awards were presented during the opening plenary session. It was completely fitting that the 2016 award of Honorary Membership should go to one of the distinguished elder statesmen of French hydrogeology, Professor Ghislain de Marsily, who needed no introduction to many of the congress participants.
Ghislain is Emeritus Professor at the University Paris 6. He graduated as a mining and geological engineer from the School of Mines in Paris during the 1960s. After working as a mining engineer, he taught groundwater hydrology at the School of Mines and in 1978 completed his doctorate thesis. In 1987 he was promoted to professor at the University Paris 6 and became Director of the Applied Geology Laboratories until 2005. He has been a teacher of hydrology at the Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau since 2012.
Throughout his career, Ghislain has been an inspiring teacher and a large number of students have graduated under his guidance. His textbooks have become important milestones in the development of hydrogeological sciences and in particular his textbook on quantitative hydrogeology has become a standard for students. Ghislain has always been willing to make his expertise applicable for practical solutions and his advice has been appreciated by expert groups both within France and internationally. He has written widely cited articles on climate change and the world’s water resources, and become a highly-appreciated partner for the media.
Ghislain has received many awards. He is a fellow of AGU and GSA, and received the latter’s Meintzer Award in 2004 and received the IAH Presidents’ Award in 2010 in recognition of his achievements in research and teaching. Ghislain was vice president of the IAH French Chapter for several terms and took over the presidency for six months in 2014 on the untimely death of Bernard Blavoux. He was involved organising the IAH Dijon Symposium in 2006, co-editing the proceedings, and participated in the organisation of the 43rd Congress in 2016. Ghislain well deserves the award of Honorary Membership of IAH, but due to a leg injury, he was not able to travel to Montpellier, but was able to respond to the award by video link to congress auditorium.
