George Harry Dury (11 September 1916 – 4 October 1996)James C. Knox, "Dury, George Harry (1916–1996)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2011 Retrieved 11 March 2018 George Dury 1919-1996: an appreciation , '' Australian Geographer'', Vol. 28, No 1, 1997. was an English geographer and hydrologist, who devised a model showing the relations between river
discharge
Discharge may refer to
Expel or let go
* Discharge, the act of firing a gun
* Discharge, or termination of employment, the end of an employee's duration with an employer
* Military discharge, the release of a member of the armed forces from serv ...
and other stream variables. His most widely read book was ''The Face of the Earth'' (1959).
Life
Dury was born at
Hellidon
Hellidon is a village and civil parish about south-west of Daventry in Northamptonshire, England. The parish area is about . It lies – above sea level on the north face of an ironstone ridge, its highest point, at Windmill Hill, being sou ...
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
, the son of Harry Dury (1879–1961), an agricultural labourer then serving in the Royal West Surrey Regiment, and his wife, Harriett Emma, née Colledge (1882–1959). He attended the grammar school in Daventry, before taking a BA (1937) and a teacher's diploma (1939) as an external student of the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
. In 1937 he married Ina Gertrude Newton (1916–2005), daughter of George Lionel Newton, army pensioner, of
Hertford Heath
Hertford Heath is a village and civil parish near the county town of Hertford in Hertfordshire, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 2,672. Geography
It is located on a heath above the River Lea valley, on its south side. Almost all of ...
, Hertfordshire. They had a daughter, Helen.
While teaching at Elizabeth College,
Guernsey
Guernsey (; Guernésiais: ''Guernési''; french: Guernesey) is an island in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy that is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown Dependency.
It is the second largest of the Channel Islands ...
, in 1939, Dury and his family were evacuated before the German occupation. He was commissioned in the Royal Air Force in 1941 and assigned to photographic mapping. His mapping of Guernsey served also for his London University MA degree. His first post-war job was as a lecturer in geology and geography at Enfield Technical College in 1946–48. He then became a geography lecturer at
Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...
, University of London (1949–62). Having retired to Risby near
Bury St Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market town, market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – ...
,
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
, he died at the West Suffolk Hospital there in 1996.
Research
Dury's model is an extension of the Bradshaw model, which shows how river characteristics change from the upper course to the lower course of a river. Dury used a line graph and a logarithmic scale, plotting the discharge along the x-axis and the other stream variables along the y-axis. The latter included depth, width, velocity, slope (gradient) and friction ( Manning formula).
Dury's work on quantitative fluvial
geomorphology
Geomorphology (from Ancient Greek: , ', "earth"; , ', "form"; and , ', "study") is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or n ...
led to a temporary stay with the
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...
in 1960–1961 and co-authorship of the influential ''Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology'' (with Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman, and John Miller, 1964). Dury's most widely read book was ''The Face of the Earth'' (1959), published by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.