This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Petra Döll, Professor of Hydrology at the Institute of Physical Geography at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. She is interviewed by Professor Okke Batelaan, Frankfurt am Main, July 4, 2025.

The original Youtube video can be found here.

Licensed under Creative Commons copyright CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

Acknowledgments:

Video & editing: Okke Batelaan, Frankie Films

Sponsorship: Professor Okke Batelaan, Flinders University, Australia

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Sten Bergström, who retired in 2017 from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Sweden. He is interviewed by Professor Berit Arheimer from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden, 28 Oct. 2025.

The original Youtube video can be found here. Licensed under Creative Commons copyright CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

Acknowledgments:

Recording and facilities by Olivia Larsson, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute payed for time and facilitaties with performing the interview.

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Emeritus Wolfgang Kinzelbach of ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He is interviewed by Professor Okke Batelaan in Davos, September 8, 2024.
The original YouTube video can be found here.
Timestamps:
0:00:14 Introduction by Okke Batelaan
0:01:20 Youth and background; father’s influence
0:03:45 High school and university studies in physics
0:04:53 Start of professional career; random walk; Stanford University
0:08:47 Mathematics teacher in Nigeria
0:10:22 PhD in Karlsruhe
0:12:58 Research in Beijing at the Institute of Environmental Chemistry
0:16:02 Return to Germany; start of groundwater career; chlorinated hydrocarbons and nitrate
0:25:20 Development of groundwater modelling tools
0:30:29 Overseas collaborations; Okavango, Botswana
0:37:47 Heidelberg tracers
0:40:02 Move to ETH; turbulence; agriculture and water
0:49:28 World food crises
0:53:05 Philosophy on life and work
0:55:04 Reflections on career and colleagues
0:58:33 Changes in academia over time
1:02:05 Future of hydrogeology
1:07:47 Teaching and supervision
1:09:17 Support from colleagues; work–life balance
1:11:55 How he would like to be remembered
1:14:07 Final words of wisdom for future scientists
1:16:50 Closure
1:17:26 End
License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Acknowledgments:
Video & editing: Okke Batelaan, Frankie Films
Sponsorship: Professor Okke Batelaan, Flinders University, Australia
Podcast: Pau Wiersma

An interview in the series of History of Hydrology, serving as an audiovisual record of the history of hydrology. This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Berit Arheimer of the Swedish Hydrological and Meteorological Institute. She is interviewed by Professor Keith Beven, Lancaster, July 13, 2023.

Warning: poor audio quality! I tried to fix it but I only made it worse, so this audio is the original Youtube audio. If you happen to be an audio expert and you know a way to improve it, please let me know at [email protected].

The original Youtube video can be found here.

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Peter Young of Lancaster University. He is interviewed by Professor Keith Beven in Lancaster, November 7, 2023.

The original YouTube video can be found here.

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:30 Introduction by Keith Beven
0:01:26 Family background, apprenticeship in aeronautics, and path to a PhD in Cambridge
0:07:20 PhD in automatic control
0:09:50 Research stay in the USA (1968–1970)
0:11:11 Return to Cambridge, lectureship, first work on the environment
0:16:28 Professorial fellowship at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU
0:21:52 Peel Inlet (WA) study on algae
0:27:40 Northern Territory study on uranium mines
0:29:52 Work with Tom Beer on tracer models and dead zones
0:31:36 Development of the CAPTAIN package
0:34:09 Sabbatical in Cambridge; move to Lancaster in 1981
0:37:08 Meeting Keith Beven; move to Lancaster and work on tracer studies
0:41:18 Continuation of CAPTAIN in MATLAB
0:47:11 Transfer functions and data-based mechanistic modelling philosophy
0:51:13 Identifying non-linearity in data-based mechanistic models
0:59:29 Awards

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Alberto Montanari of the University of Bologna. Alberto was the 2018 Henry Darcy medallist of the EGU. He is interviewed by Professor Keith Beven at the IUGG-IAHS General Assembly, Berlin, July 14, 2023.

The original YouTube video can be found here.

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:33 Introduction by Keith Beven
0:00:52 Background and interest in water
0:02:23 PhD at Politecnico di Milano with Renzo Rosso
0:05:12 A life in athletics
0:06:00 Renzo Rosso as a supervisor
0:07:46 Introduction to stochastic hydrology
0:08:47 Influential hydrologists
0:10:41 Member of the major risk committee of Italy
0:12:59 Risk communication in climate change
0:16:02 Resilience and the value of historical data
0:19:28 Service to the hydrological community
0:21:48 Editor-in-Chief of Water Resources Research and collaboration networks
0:23:42 Comments on the Panta Rhei hydrological decade
0:25:38 Awards
0:26:58 Commitment to open science
0:29:00 Closure

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Andrea Rinaldo of EPFL and Università di Padova. Andrea was the 2005 John Dalton medallist of the EGU and the 2023 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. He is interviewed by Professor Keith Beven at EPFL, Switzerland, March 1, 2023.
The original YouTube video can be found here.
Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:30 Introduction by Keith Beven
0:01:16 Family background; 1966 Venice flood; studying Hydraulic Engineering in Padua
0:05:18 PhD at Purdue University (USA)
0:09:28 Return to Italy and University of Padua
0:12:00 Appointed Full Professor at Trento at age 30
0:13:37 First encounter with Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe
0:16:17 Ignacio’s influence on Italian hydrology
0:17:39 Collaboration with Ignacio at MIT and Iowa
0:18:58 Meeting Jack Kennedy in Iowa
0:20:33 Geomorphological Unit Hydrograph; Scale Problems meeting in Caracas
0:21:54 First WRR paper with Alessandro Marani on catchment-scale solute transport
0:24:33 Fractal river basins book
0:26:34 Summer schools at Venice Academy of Sciences and Arts; Per Bak and self-organised criticality
0:30:33 Meeting Luna Leopold; river networks; minimum energy dissipation
0:38:15 Serendipity in research; ecohydrology of networks; biological invasions and biodiversity models
0:43:05 EPFL and ERC grant
0:45:40 Zebra mussels in the Mississippi
0:48:22 Network-conditioned disease propagation
0:50:20 Predicting cholera in Hawaii
0:57:44 Predicting COVID spread in Italy
0:59:29 Residence times of water in catchments
1:02:36 Working with younger researchers
1:04:20 Awards
1:06:21 Playing rugby for Italy
1:11:25 Why hydrology is exciting
1:12:27 Closure
1:12:42 Stockholm Water Prize
License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Demetris Koutsoyiannis of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Demetris was the 2009 Henry Darcy medallist of the EGU. He is interviewed by Dr Antonis Koussis of the National Observatory of Athens, Greece at the Austria Center, Vienna, Austria, 11 April, 2019.

The original YouTube video can be found here.

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:22 Introduction by Antonis Koussis
0:00:54 The beginning; a video of the village of Demetris can be seen at: Μεσούντα - Φαράγγι Φάγγου πτήση - Mesounta. From 1:50, the stream with the steep banks and the old bridge are adjacent to his family house.
0:09:16 Move to Athens, adjustment, Greece dictatorship, high school
0:14:53 Events at Athens Polytechnic in 1973 (student uprising against the dictatorship). Additional material available online.
0:17:37 Study Civil Engineering at the Polytechnic
0:22:44 Early work experiences after study
0:24:45 Research in hydrology, PhD studies
0:27:43 Path to academia and key milestones
0:31:30 Working with Zbigniew Kundzewicz, editing Hydrological Sciences Journal
0:33:40 Relationship between stochastics and physics
0:43:36 Climate change: going against the current
0:51:55 Thinking and philosophy
0:57:18 Collaboration and working with others
0:59:45 Interest in Karl Popper’s philosophy
1:02:44 Direction of hydrology, major challenges, advice for young hydrologists
1:05:56 Closure

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Acknowledgments:
Video & editing: Okke Batelaan, Frankie Films
Sponsorship: Professor Okke Batelaan, Flinders University, Australia
Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This History of Hydrology interview features Professor Zbigniew Kundzewicz from the Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poland. He is interviewed by Dr. Mikołaj Piniewski of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland at the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, Poland, 29 May, 2019.

The original YouTube video can be found here.

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:22 Introduction by Mikołaj Piniewski
0:02:40 Youth and background
0:04:08 Studies at the Warsaw University of Technology
0:06:36 PhD at the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences
0:08:02 Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the University of Karlsruhe
0:12:23 The Tison Award
0:13:06 Unsolved problems in hydrology
0:16:14 Work at the Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment of the Polish Academy of Sciences
0:18:46 Interest in climate change
0:22:56 Work for the IPCC
0:26:56 Most important achievement
0:29:13 Paper in Science in 2008
0:33:29 “Climate change and water” IPCC report
0:35:48 The Hydrological Sciences Journal editorship
0:41:02 In which direction does hydrology go
0:46:56 Growth of Chinese science
0:51:01 Family
0:55:06 Message to the young generation of hydrologists

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Acknowledgments:
Video & editing: Leszek Szymański, Frankie Films
Sponsorship: Dr. Mikołaj Piniewski, Warsaw University of Life Sciences; Professor Okke Batelaan, Flinders University, Australia

Podcast: Pau Wiersma

This episode features Professor Thomas Dunne (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), interviewed by Professor Keith Beven (Lancaster University, UK) at the Austria Center, Vienna, Austria, 11 April 2019.

The original Youtube video can be found ⁠here⁠.

Timestamps:
0:00:00 Start
0:00:22 Introduction by Keith Beven
0:01:28 Going back to the beginning
0:04:25 Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University
0:08:24 PhD supervisor: Reds Wolman
0:09:44 Fieldwork in Vermont
0:19:07 Saturation-excess overland flow
0:23:06 Contact with John Hewlett; non-point source pollution
0:31:23 After Vermont: work in Kenya
0:45:25 McGill University; University of Washington
0:49:27 University of California, Santa Barbara
0:54:36 Working with Luna Leopold
1:03:18 Being lucky with events
1:07:45 Debris flow close to home
1:10:42 Work in the Amazon
1:15:52 Working with graduate students on paper reviews
1:20:09 Closure

License: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Acknowledgments:
Video and editing: Okke Batelaan, Frankie Films
Sponsorship: Professor Okke Batelaan, Flinders University, Australia
Podcast: Pau Wiersma