Eric Franklin Wood

1947 - 2021
Eric Franklin Wood, of Princeton, NJ, died on November 3, 2021 after a multi-year battle with cancer. He was 74.



Born in Vancouver, Canada, Eric received a BS in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia before coming to the United States where he earned his doctorate from MIT in 1974. Eric's early research was in systems analysis as applied to hydrology, and he worked for two years in Austria at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 1976, where he would spend his entire academic career.



Eric is known for his enormous impact in the field of hydrology. He contributed pioneering work to the development of hydrologic modeling, the use of satellite remote sensing data, and the creation of continental and global climate models. Eric was committed to developing better climate data for parts of the world that had been historically overlooked such as sub-Saharan Africa and South America. His impact was felt not only through his research but also through his professional service to the global scientific community and through his mentoring of more than 30 Ph.D students and a similar number of postdocs and research staff.



Eric won 17 major awards for research scholarship, including the Robert E. Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union, the Alfred Wegener Medal and the John Dalton Medal of the European Geosciences Union, and the Jule G. Charney Award of the American Meteorological Society. Eric was a member of the National Academy of Engineering as well as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Canada, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.



From 2013-14, Eric served as president of the hydrology section of the American Geophysical Union. He also served as the chairman of the Hydrology Committee of the American Meteorological Society and was a member of numerous mission science teams for NASA's various Earth Observing Systems.



When not working on his research or travelling around the world to conferences or to collaborate with international colleagues, Eric was an avid fisherman, hunter, and skier. He regularly traveled back to British Columbia, Canada for annual salmon fishing trips with friends and ski trips at Whistler and enjoyed deer hunting in upstate New York. He loved cooking, good wine, and played a mean game of cribbage.



Eric is survived by his siblings John, Elizabeth, and Peter, former spouse Katharine, children Alex and Emily, and grandchildren Clementine, August, Elliott, and Silas.



Donations in Eric's memory may be made to the American Geophysical Union, Hydrology Section Fund. He will be missed.