Don and Betty Kirkham Gold Medal
Beginning in 1997, Don Nielsen, along with Rienk van der Ploeg, University of Hannover, jointly drafted guidelines for a Kirkham program to honor their major professor Don Kirkham and his wife Betty and to recognize scientists who have made outstanding scholarly achievements and educational contributions to advance soil physics.
The program consists of the Don and Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award, the Don and Betty Kirkham Gold Medal, and the quadrennial Don and Betty Kirkham Conference. For that purpose, the Don and Betty Kirkham Fund and later the Lena and Maria van der Ploeg Fund were established by the Agronomic Science Foundation (ASF).
The Don and Betty Kirkham Gold Medal is presented every eight years at alternate Kirkham Conferences. The medal commemorates the career achievements of those most extraordinary individuals throughout the world who uniquely contributed to soil physics because of their inspirational teaching, research and professional activities. Nominees for the medal must be living and retired from employment. The recognition consists of a certificate, a gold medal and a monetary award.
William “Bill” Jury received a BS in Physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1973. He came to UC Riverside in 1974 and spent his entire career there before retiring in 2008 as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences. His main research areas while at UCR were in the detection of contamination in water and soil, and water management and conservation. Over his research career, he published 225 papers and 4 books and was ranked as one of the 100 most frequently cited researchers in the world in the fields of Engineering and Environmental Science. He received the US Department of Agriculture Secretary's Honor Award for Environmental Protection in Washington DC in 1999, and in 2000, he was one of 72 US scientists elected to the U. S. National Academy of Sciences. While at UCR, he received both the Graduate Student Association and Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Awards and served as the first Chair of the Faculty Academy of Distinguished Teaching. During his career at UCR, he served in administration as Department Chair, Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, and Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost before retiring in 2008.
“Dr. van Genuchten’s landmark contributions and leadership in soil physics and vadose zone hydrology serve as the basis for this Gold Medal,” says Jan Hopmans, University of California-Davis, who chaired the selection committee.
“His many achievements have transformed hydrologic science applications by propelling the soil physics and vadose zone hydrology disciplines in the mainstream geosciences field. Especially important have been his studies of the basic processes affecting water and contaminant transport in variably-saturated (vadose zone) systems, his contributions in analytical and numerical modeling, his development of powerful inverse (parameter estimation) methods, and his documentation of computer software that is now being used worldwide in the scientific and engineering communities. Equally important has been long-time service to the profession,” Hopmans added.
Van Genuchten is likely best known for the theoretical equations that he developed for the constitutive relationships between capillary pressure, water content and the hydraulic conductivity of variably-saturated porous media (van Genuchten, 1980). Because of their attractive mathematical properties, and their simplicity, the "van Genuchten equations" are now universally used in numerical simulators of subsurface flow and transport processes. In addition to his research impacts, van Genuchten’s leadership has largely contributed to the successful careers of countless graduate students, junior scientists, and post-doctoral and visiting scientists.
Throughout his career, van Genuchten has given seminars, short-courses, and invited presentations in 30 different countries throughout the world. Van Genuchten was instrumental in SSSA launching Vadose Zone Journal, dedicated specifically to the variably-saturated vadose zone, and served as its founding editor.
“He has brought enormous visibility and credibility to the soil physics profession. His personal and team research over the past 30 years has been second to none in the world, as has been his service to the profession,” says Hopmans. “Rien’s contributions to the Soil Science community are an inspiration for us all.”
Van Genuchten was elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, Soil Science Society of America and American Society of Agronomy, as well as received several awards such as an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Hannover in Germany (2004), the Dionys Štur SAS Medal of Honour from the Slovak Academy of Sciences (2005), and the John Dalton Medal from the European Geosciences Union (2010).
The following appears in Donald Nielsen’s obituary in CSA News (August, 2020)
Don has been an icon with huge impact on the development of the soil physics discipline and on people working in the soil sciences, agricultural sciences, and geosciences around the world. Born in Phoenix, AZ in 1931, he completed his B.S. degree in agricultural chemistry in 1953 at the University of Arizona where he also earned his M.S. degree in 1954. In 1958, he received his Ph.D. degree working with Don Kirkham at Iowa State University.
Don spent his extremely successful career at the University of California (UC)–Davis where he shaped the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources into what it is today. Working together with Jim Biggar, his major contributions early on were on the theory and experimental aspects of solute miscible displacement in soils. Another main topic throughout his career was how we approach, analyze, and understand spatial variability of soils. Don worked on scaling issues and was first to introduce state-space analysis and filtering methods for signal processing to derive spatial process relationships in farmers’ fields.
With his background growing up in a rural environment where his father managed a large vegetable farm, Don was always interested in the improvement of agricultural management and the development of technologies for sustainable land use. Even after his retirement, he remained active by continuously engaging with students and young scientists. One example was his long-term support of the International College of Agrophysics in Trieste, Italy where he and colleagues taught advanced technologies to help people from all over the world improve food production, agricultural management, and related education in their home countries.
Don was a Fellow of SSSA, ASA, and AGU and served as president of SSSA in 1984 and of ASA in 1990. Because of his enormous contributions to the physics of water flow and solute transport in soils, he received the Robert Horton Medal from AGU in 2001 among many other awards. His list of service on local, national, and international scientific boards and committees, and in various professional societies, literally fills pages and can be found on the website of the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS).
Don was a creative scientist and an inspiring teacher. He published more than 300 papers and several books. He not only taught at UC-Davis but gave lectures and short courses on all continents. Those who attended some of these events can testify to his enthusiasm for science and being an inspiration to all. He thoroughly enjoyed participating in gatherings with colleagues and students. Many of us remember Don as being the one in the room asking the most challenging questions and not letting you off the hook easily. As such, he was always outspoken and never worried that some may not like this. On the other hand, Don—supported by his wife Joanne—cared for everyone in full measure. People were most important to both of them. He profoundly affected the work, careers, and lives of an enormous number of individuals around the globe.
In his message to us, posted in his career memories, Don points out the universal need to develop innovative technologies for us to better manage our globe's natural resources without soil exhaustion. To increase the awareness of the importance of soils, he even emphasized that children in primary and secondary education ought to learn about soils and their conservation.
Don Nielsen's life and legacy remain a huge incentive for us to continue the research and education ideals he worked on so ambitiously during his entire career and to reach out to and interact with colleagues to have an impact on the sustainable use of our resources in a peaceful world.
