Book review: Gravitational Systems of Groundwater Flow: Theory, Evaluation, Utilization, by József Tóth (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Excerpt

The introduction of most of today’s practicing hydrogeologists to local and regional groundwater-flow systems has been strongly influenced by (if not based upon) József Tóth’s seminal papers (Tóth 1962, 1963). His ‘mathematical model’, which included elegantly illustrated analytical solutions to the Laplace equation, was a significant improvement over previous graphical solutions (Hubbert 1940) that, while groundbreaking, did not consider the dynamics that Tóth recognized as comprising local, intermediate, and regional-scale groundwater-flow systems in composite basins. His work thus greatly extended the shift of hydrogeologists’ focus from well hydraulics to cross-formational groundwater flow. The intrinsic value of Tóth’s analytical solutions was internationally accepted and his theories were further evaluated and developed as numerical solutions with the use of then-nascent but increasingly popular ‘digital computers’ (Freeze and Witherspoon 1966, 1967, 1968). Thus, it was that “a group of Canadian hydrologists”—unnamed by Domenico (1972) but referring to József Tóth, Peter Meyboom, and Allan Freeze—redirected and broadened the perspective of a hydrogeologist, beckoned the convergence of natural and engineering sciences (thereafter combined as the basis of modern hydrogeology), and provided inspiration for countless scientists and engineers investigating groundwater-flow systems thereafter. …