Vit Klemes

Vit Klemes was a Czech-born Canadian hydrologist, born in 1932 in Podivin, Czechoslovakia, and died in 2010, who became a leading international figure in water resources research after emigrating to Canada following the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Working largely with Environment Canada and as a visiting professor at institutions including the California Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich, he wrote roughly 150 scientific papers examining the statistical foundations of hydrology, including influential critiques of how hydrologists apply probability theory to design floods and reservoir storage. He served as president of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences in 1987 and received both the International Hydrology Prize and the American Society of Civil Engineers Ven Te Chow Award.