CHRISTIANSEN

CHRISTIANSEN 09.04. 1905 Hyrum UT/USA 28.10. 1989 Logan UT/USA Jerald Emmett Christiansen was educated at Utah State Agricultural College as agricultural engineer, and at University of California as a civil engineer. He was from 1928 to 1936 a junior agricultural engineer at University of California, Berkeley CA, and promoted then to assistant irrigation engineer. From 1942 to 1946, Christiansen was at the USDA Regional Salinity Laboratory, Riverside CA, when being appointed professor of civil engineering at Utah State Agricultural College, Logan UT, thereby directing also its Engineering Experiment Station. He in parallel served as an irrigation engineer for FAO, UN Montevideo Uruguay, and was a visiting professor to the University of Davis CA. He retired in 1971, but continued as a consultant for the water requirements in Latin America and also counselling graduate students in the Agricultural and Irrigation Engineering Department. Christiansen was the recipient of the 1976 Royce J. Tipton Award for his ‘half-century of dedication to worldwide service resulting in significant advancement in irrigation and drainage engineering and salinity control’. Christiansen mainly worked in agricultural engineering. Whereas his first study relating to the distribution of silt in open channel flow was shortly later generalized by Hunter Rouse (1906-1996), most of his later studies were related to irrigation by sprinklers and sprinkler hydraulics. These included the uniformity of sprinkler irrigation, measuring discharge in the agricultural environment, and the manifold problem of a sprinkler system. Work in the 1960s was concerned with evapo-transpiration and evaporation. Christiansen was one of the frequent participants of the Congresses of the International Commission of Irrigation and Drainage ICID. Anonymous (1959). Christiansen, J.E. Who’s who in engineering 8: 423. Lewis: New York. Anonymous (1971). J.E. Christiansen. Civil Engineering 41(1): 37. P Anonymous (1976). J.E. Christiansen. Civil Engineering 46(10): 103. P Christiansen, J.E. (1935). Distribution of silt in open channels. Trans. AGU 16(2): 478-485. Christiansen, J.E. (1936). Measuring water for irrigation. Bulletin 558. University of California, Berkeley CA. Christiansen, J.E. (1941). The uniformity of application of water by sprinkler systems. Agricultural Engineering 22(3): 89-92. Christiansen, J.E. (1942). Hydraulics of sprinkling systems for irrigation. Trans. ASCE 107: 221-250.