Abstract

John Philip was struck by a car and killed on Saturday 26 June 1999 in Amsterdam where he was visiting the Centre for Mathematics and Information Science. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a Foreign Member of the All-Union (later Russian) Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and only the second Australian Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering. He was the first non-American recipient of the Robert E. Horton Medal, the highest award for hydrology of the American Geophysical Union. In 1998 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for 'service to the science of hydrology, to scientific communication in promoting the interests of science for the community, and to Australian culture through architecture and literature'. This memoir discusses John Philip's character and his work as Australia's most distinguished environmental physicist. It explores his management of science and his role in the Australian Academy of Science as well as his poetry and his fascination with architecture.