1987 Tyler Laureate
Gilbert F. White
Gilbert F. White is a world renowned geographer whose research has
contributed to the understanding of interfaces between the natural and human
environment. The specific subject of Dr. White's scholarship has been water
resources. His pioneering studies challenged existing methods of flood management
and established natural hazards as a legitimate field of geographic investigation.
His research on river basins gave substance to the notion of integrated
river basin development long before systems theory came into vogue.
Dr. White has addressed social as well as physical components of river systems, including their behavioral, legal, engineering and policy aspects. His seminal contributions to geographic science include the concept of human adjustment, the pivotal role of human perception of the natural environment, and the importance of conscious decisions in resource management. He has promoted alternatives in resource management, such as forecasting and changes in land use, rather than dams in response to floods. In meeting water supply needs, he has influenced changes in water use and, with his wife, Anne, in the provision of domestic water in developing countries. Colleagues have called him the "father of flood plain management."
Managers are identified by Dr. White as the key figures in mediating the environmenthumanity relationship. The process they employ is decisionmaking, and the outcome is human adjustment. White's chroniclers, Robert Kates and Ian Burton, report that White moved beyond utilitarian analysis to "the boundaries between psychology and economics . . . the geography of perception, the world inside people's minds."
Over time the scale of Dr. White's research expanded from the local to the national to the international. The culmination of his career has been global analysis and global leadership. Dr. White helped UNESCO with arid zone research; he chaired the U.N.'s Panel on Integrated River Development; he consulted with a fournation Lower Mekong River Coordinating Committee; he advised the U.N. Development Programme on manmade lakes; and he has consulted on the water quality of the Nile River/Lake Nasser. He now serves on the Advisory Committee on Greenhouse Gases of the World Meterological Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, and ICSU, while continuing to serve as a member of SCOPE.
As the third President of SCOPE (the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment) of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), Dr. White was pivotal in gaining wide acceptance for SCOPE as a nongovernmental, international council of scientists which can provide advice to governments and international bodies on environmental problems. During these six years Dr. White established a strong program at SCOPE to advance knowledge of the influence of humans on their environment and the effects of these environmental changes on people.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr.White also has the distinction of being a Foreign Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Dr. White earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. He served on the National Resources Planning Board, the Bureau of the Budget, and as President of Haverford College before teaching at Chicago, Oxford, and the University of Colorado. At Colorado he was Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science; and since 1980 he as been Gustavson Distinguished Professor of Geography, Emeritus.
Among his other honors, Dr. White has received UNEP's Sasakawa Environment Prize and the Anderson Medal of the Association of American Geographers.