Harold Edwin Hurst (1 January 1880 – 7 December 1978) was a British

hydrologist Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydro ...

from Leicester. Hurst's (1951) study on measuring the long-term storage capacity of reservoirs documented the presence of

long-range dependence Long-range dependence (LRD), also called long memory or long-range persistence, is a phenomenon that may arise in the analysis of spatial or time series data. It relates to the rate of decay of statistical dependence of two points with increasing ...

in hydrology, especially concerning the fluctuations of the water level in the

Nile River The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the longest river i ...

. In doing so, he developed the empirical rescaled range methodology for measuring long-range dependence. Much of Hurst's research was motivated by his empirical observations of the Nile. The

Hurst exponent The Hurst exponent is used as a measure of long-term memory of time series. It relates to the autocorrelations of the time series, and the rate at which these decrease as the lag between pairs of values increases. Studies involving the Hurst expo ...

, which has been used in other fields, such as finance and cardiology, was named after him. His work in Egypt started in 1906 and lasted 62 years doing his best work after he reached 65. He championed the prelude to the new Aswan High Dam project which was built using his plan.

References

* Mandelbrot, Benoît B., ''The (Mis)Behavior of Markets, A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward'' (Basic Books, 2004) * Hurst, H., 1951, "Long Term Storage Capacity of Reservoirs," Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, 116, 770-799. * * Hurst, H., T''he Nile: A General Account of the River and the Utilization of Its Waters'' (Constable, 1952). * Hurst, H., ''The Lake Plateau Basin of the Nile'', Government Press, 1927. * Hurst, H., Black and Simaika, 'The Future Conservation of the Nile', ''Nile Basin,'' vol. VII, 1946.

External links

* * 1880 births 1978 deaths British hydrologists {{UK-scientist-stub