Wolf, Peter O
Contents
Photograph
Dates
Peter O. Wolf
Biography
Peter Wolf graduated in Civil Engineering from Queen Mary College, London in 1941. He subsequently worked as a consultant on land drainage, flood and coastal protection projects followed by a short period of work during the last years of WWII for the War Office. He then worked on various hydro-electric schemes before being appointed in 1949 as lecturer in the Hydraulics Section at Imperial College. In 1953, a meeting of government hydrologists in East and Central Africa requested that a postgraduate course in Hydrology be established at Imperial College, the responsibility was passed to Wolf. Aided by the Chief Hydrologist of Kenya, F. Grundy, and his assistant, H. Underhill (who later also became a lecturer), Wolf established the one-year full-time postgraduate course in Engineering Hydrology in Oct 1955. A year later, Wolf became a Reader and Head of the newly formed Hydrology Section.
He left Imperial in 1966 to become the founding professor and Head of the Civil Engineering Department at City University, London, as well as a visiting professor at Stanford University, Cornell University and Autonomous University of Mexico amongst others. In 1982 he left academia to work as a consultant, in 1991 becoming a director of Pell Frishmann Consulting Engineers. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institutions of Civil Engineering and Water and Environmental Management. He is a Past President and Honorary Member of the British Hydrological Society and the BHS Annual Meeting for Young Hydrologists is named the Peter Wolf Early Career Hydrologist's events. He holds an honorary Doctorate from the Dresden University of Technology.
Hydrological Achievements
Reference Material
Source: History of Environmental and Water Resource Engineering at Imperial College
