View source for Shaw, Elizabeth M

== Hydrological Achievements ==
Her academic work was nearly always focused on meteorology and rainfall, particularly Areal Rainfall Estimation and Network Design. Applications ranged from the benchmark Lynmouth flood with Dr Prus- Chacinski of Dobbie and Partners to a long-term study of rainfall in New Guinea in which she was introduced to multiquadric splines by Paul Johnston. This in turn led to a publication of a paper with Peter Lynn, one of the Imperial MSc students. She also did work on network design with another MSc Student, Peter Herbst from South Africa. Together with Imperial colleague Enda O’Connell she published a paper using spatial correlation analysis to assist in designing rain gauge networks. Elizabeth’s connections to Irish hydrologists extended to Eamon Nash and Jim Dooge who were regular visitors to Imperial in the 1970s, as were many other hydrologists with international reputations such as Raudkivi, Gumbel, Linsley, Amorocho, Matalas and Midgley. She knew them all and inhabited their world.
Hydrology in Practice, published in 1983, was her big professional achievement, and must go down as a milestone in British Hydrology. It fulfilled a personal goal of training engineers to be competent in hydrology, and she had the energy, enthusiasm and dedication to deliver what was needed.