Established in 1974, the Horton Medal is named in honor of Robert E.
Horton, who made significant contributions to the study of the
hydrologic cycle. The Horton Medal is awarded not more than once
annually to an individual “for outstanding contributions to hydrology.”
Walter B. Langbein was the first recipient of the Horton Medal. It is
presented to one awardee annually.
Dr. Murugesu (Siva) Sivapalan is Professor of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, and also Geography at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. He holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering (University of
Ceylon, 1975), M.A. (1983) and Ph.D (1986) in Civil Engineering, with a
major in hydrology, from Princeton University. Between 1978 and 1981,
Siva worked as a consulting civil engineer in Nigeria. During the
period 1986-1988 he served as a Research Associate at Princeton
University. He spent the next 17 years at the Centre for Water
Research, University of Western Australia, Perth, joining as a Lecturer
and getting promoted to full Professor in 1999. Dr Sivapalan has also
served as Visiting Professor at the Vienna University of Technology,
Austria (1995) and the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
(2001), and has been Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University
of Technology Sydney (2011). He joined the University of Illinois in
2005. Dr. Sivapalan has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in
watershed hydrology, engineering hydrology, and stochastic
hydrology.
Dr Sivapalan was the founding chair of the International Association
of Hydrological
Sciences (IAHS) /Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB:
2003-1012) initiative. He is a member of the editorial boards of
several international journals and is Executive Editor of the European
Geosciences Union’s Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) journal.
In recent times he has been the leader of the NSF-funded University of
Illinois Hydrologic Synthesis project, which resulted in three special
issues in the Water Resources Research and Journal of Geophysical
Research journals, and has contributed to the development of the
scientific framework for a likely new global and decadal (2013-2022)
initiative on Predictions under Change (PUC).
Dr Sivapalan has been elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of
Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), Fellow of the American
Geophysical Union (AGU), Fellow of the Modeling and Simulation Society
of Australia and New Zealand (MSSANZ), and Life Member of the
International Water Academy. He is the recipient of the European
Geophysical Society’s John Dalton Medal, the Biennial Medal (Natural
Systems) of the Modeling and Simulation Society of Australia and New
Zealand, the International Hydrology Prize of the International
Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), and the Hydrological
Sciences Award of the American Geophysical Union. In 2007 he was the
Borland Lecturer of the AGU Hydrology Days at Colorado State
University. In 2003 Professor Sivapalan was awarded the Centenary Medal
by the Australian Government “for service to Australian Society in
Hydrology and Environmental Engineering.”
