Reply and acceptance

Abstract

Mr. President and members of the Union: I certainly esteem it a very great honor to receive this award from the American Geophysical Union which contains in its membership such a large number of very distinguished and capable scientists. I accept the Medal with deep humility and a feeling of unworthiness but nevertheless also with a great feeling of encouragement and inspiration that you good friends have such confidence in me.I feel that the geophysical enterprises on which I have been particularly engaged have been ones which were ripe for development so that not much was needed but a reasonable amount of energy and intelligence to get them started. That was certainly true of the Section of Hydrology. A few of us remember that prior to 1930 the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics was urging the American Geophysical Union to establish a Section of Hydrology but that action on the part of our Union was postponed from year to year because it was felt there was not enough interest in hydrology to justify the organization of such a Section. Then in 1930 the Union organized a Section of Hydrology, and we were all overwhelmed with the response that we received and the place that it filled in the scientific set‐up of this country. I think there were two policies that were perhaps quite effective. One was the organization of nine permanent Research‐Committees on which were appointed an aggregate of about 115 men who were outstanding in their particular fields of hydrology and these men at once got to work actively in the Section. The other effective policy was to invite the hydrologists of the West to participate and to hold regional meetings, which they did.