Gilbert Fowler White (November 26, 1911 – October 5, 2006) was a prominent American geographer, sometimes termed the "father of floodplain management" and the "leading environmental geographer of the 20th century" (Wescoat, 2006). White is known predominantly for his work on natural hazards, particularly flooding, and the importance of sound water management in contemporary society. Background White was raised in Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood, and spent summers in the Tongue River Valley of Wyoming, before studying at the University of Chicago, where he earned his B.S. in 1932 and his PhD in 1942 (published 1945). From 1946 to 1955 he was President of Haverford College. He then returned to Chicago as a Professor of Geography, where he was the central figure in the "Chicago school" of natural hazards research. In 1970, he moved to the University of Colorado, before retiring after ten years there. Having published his first paper in 1935, he was still publishing into his 90s (Wescoat and White, 2003). White was motivated by his Quaker faith to do research beneficial to humanity. As a conscientious objector to World War II, from 1942 to 1946 he served with the American Friends Service Committee aiding war refugees in France, and was briefly interned by the Nazis at Baden-Baden. He continued to serve as a leader in various Quaker service organizations for much of his life. He was also heavily involved in applying his research to reform flooding and water policy in the United States and the Middle East. In 1944, White married Anne Underwood, with whom he had three children (Will, Mary, and Frances). Anne collaborated with Gilbert in his research until her death in 1989. Gilbert remarried in 2003 to Claire Sheridan. Scholarly contributions White's main contributions to society and to scholarship have been classified by Kates (2011) as follows: How to bring safe water to all the world's people as a human right How to reduce significantly the global toll of hazard deaths and damages How to facilitate peace, through joint water development and management How to make geography (in particular) and science (in general) more useful to the world How to enable people to coexist with nature and develop sustainably. In 1972, at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Gilbert F. White and a meteorologist Thomas Malone proposed the program of environmental monitoring. The ideas of environmental monitoring were announced