Dr. Stavros Papadopulos
Alumni Association Distinguished Achievement Award,
1998
Education:
- Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, Robert College,
Istanbul, Turkey
- Master of Science in Hydrology, New Mexico Institute of
Mining and Technology
- Master of Arts in Civil Engineering, Princeton University
- Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, Princeton, University
As a graduate student at New Mexico Tech, Papadopulos worked with
Mahdi Hantush, the head of Tech's hydrology program and an
internationally renowned hydrologist. Together they published a
paper on the flow of groundwater to collector wells. Papadopulos
put his training in well hydraulics to good use in his future
career, specializing in that field. Between 1962 and 1974, he
published over 20 papers and monographs on well hydraulics. Many
of these are still widely cited today, but three of them in
particular have stood the test of time. In 1965, together with
John Bredehoeft, he published "Rates of vertical groundwater
movement estimated from the earth's thermal profile" in the first
volume of Water Resources Research. This paper was one of
the very first to recognize the critically important interplay
between groundwater advection of heat and the thermal
characteristics of the shallow crust. It has proved to be the
foundation of an entire sub-field of geophysics which takes
advantage of this type of analysis to understand both groundwater
flow regimes and heat production in the earth's crust. At New
Mexico Tech, Marshall Reiter and more recently Brian McPherson,
have based their careers on following up the lines of research
suggested by this seminal paper.
The other two papers that are particularly noteworthy are
Papadopulos, Bredehoeft, and Cooper (1973) "On the analysis of
'slug test data', and Cooper, Bredehoeft, and Papadopulos (1967)
"Responses of a finite-diameter well to an instantaneous charge
of water," both published in Water Resources Research.
These papers described the fundamentals of what was then a new
approach to testing the hydraulic properties of geological
formations. The 'slug test' has found extremely wide use in
groundwater hydrology. Many thousands of 'slug tests' are
performed every year.
S. S. Papadopulos & Associates, located in Bethesda, Maryland,
is one of the "elite" of the groundwater consulting industry.
They are often called in as a "superconsultant" by other
consulting firms to solve particularly difficult problems. SSP&A
have worked on many of the most prominent environmental and water
resources problems in the country, including Love Canal, the
Stringfellow acid pits, and the Arkansas River Basin adjudication
between Colorado and Kansas, where their analysis was presented
in argument before the U. S. Supreme Court.
S. S. Papadopulos is one of the most widely recognized and
respected names in groundwater hydrology, both by researchers and
by practitioners. He has made fundamental contributions to the
science that will continue to be cited for many decades to come.
He has also established and run one of the most successful
groundwater consulting firms in the nation.
Professional Memberships:
- American Society of Civil Engineers
- American Geophysical Union
- Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers
- Internatonal Association of Hydrogeologists
- Geological society of America
- Sigma Xi
- plus numerous boards and advisory councils
|
|
