Gary Parker received the 2014 G. K. Gilbert Award at the 2014 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, held 15–19 December in San Francisco, Calif. The award recognizes “a scientist who has either made a single significant advance or sustained significant contributions to the field of Earth and planetary surface processes, and who has in addition promoted an environment of unselfish cooperation in research and the inclusion of young scientists into the field.”

Citation

“For visionary research on Earth surface processes, advancing the fields of sediment transport and morphodynamics and inspiring a generation of Earth surface scientists.”

—Marcelo H. Garcia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana

 

 

Response

I express my deep thanks to those who supported me in regard to the G. K. Gilbert Award. They are but a subset of a world of fascinating colleagues with whom I have coevolved over my career. The collective phenomena of subaerial and submarine morphodynamics remain irresistibly appealing to me. After all, are there many more beautiful things than a meandering or braided stream, animated using Google Engine? I want to see progress. I want to know more. I want to leave the scene knowing that more progress will be made. Maybe I can continue to contribute by the Method of Inadvertently Littering the Literature with Mistakes. See, he’s wrong again! (Well, I thought I was right at the time…) And may we get closer and closer in our rationality to that which strums so hard on our strings of spiritual aesthetics.

—Gary Parker, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana