1986 Tyler Laureate
Werner Stumm
Werner Stumm is honored with the Tyler Prize as the father of the multidisciplinary field of aquatic chemistry. His research has probed the distribution and circulation of chemical compounds in natural waters. He has directed fundamental research for the removal of pollutants from water supplies and waste waters, and he has advocated the use of chemical concepts and ecological concepts in water pollution control and the preservation of ecological systems.
With fellow 1986 Tyler Laureate and environmental biologist Richard A. Vollenweider, Dr. Stumm contributed significantly to understanding eutrophication, the overfertilization that clogs lakes, rivers and reservoirs with excessive vegetation, resulting from the concentration of phosphorus due to agricultural and urban wastes. For twenty years Dr. Stumm has championed multidisciplinary teamwork by scientists to focus on the interaction of chemical, physical, biological and sociological forces affecting the environment. Beginning in 1966, Dr. Stumm has regularly organized conferences to exchange ideas on chemical processes and equilibria in natural water systems and to examine global chemical cycles and their alterations by humanity. He has successfully intensified the scientific community's commitment to longterm environmental research and he has raised the level of awareness and understanding of water quality problems in wide circles of world society.
As Director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Water resources and Water Pollution Control (associated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) for the past sixteen years, Dr. Stumm has helped fashion that organization into Europe's foremost facility for research in water quality.
Dr. Stumm has warned that isolate protective measures such as air cleaning and wastewater treatment plants will not significantly arrest the destruction of the environment. His concern is that the higher the population density and the higher the economic/technological demands of industrialnation lifestyles, the more humanity will pollute and threaten to impair the Earth's environment. Dr. Stumm's conclusion is that during the course of the next two generations population growth must be halted and the consumption of goods must be brought under better control. Otherwise, "the heightened expenditure of energy will progressively disturb (the Earth's) hydrogeological cycles and call into question the preservation of our lifesupport systems."
Author of more than 200 scientific papers, Dr. Stumm collaborated with James J. Morgan at Caltech in writing "Aquatic Chemistry" (WileyInterscience, 1970), the basic text on the distribution and environmental impact of chemicals in freshwater and marine environments.
Born in Switzerland, Dr. Stumm earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1952
from the University of Zurich. After completing postdoctoral work in 1956,
he joined the Harvard University faculty for 15 years, including appointment
as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Chemistry. Among his other honors,
Dr. Stumm has received the American Chemical Society's Award for Pollution
Control.