Ward Whicker
F. Ward Whicker is Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University (CSU), where he taught graduate level courses in radioecology and radionuclide transport modeling for over 40 years. He and his graduate students conducted research in these fields, leading to the development of approximately 175 open literature publications, dozens of technical reports, many book chapters and five books. His formal teaching extended to organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Union of Radioecologists, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 1989 he founded the Par Pond Radioecology Laboratory at the Savannah River Site, where he spent three years studying the behavior of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems. Dr. Whicker is regarded as one of the founders of Radioecology, the field addressing the fate and effects of radioactivity in the environment. His early work on fallout radionuclides in ecosystems had implications for health effects in human, plant and animal populations. His research on the effects of ionizing radiation on plants and animals has contributed to the development of national and international guidelines for protecting the general environment from radioactive contamination. His work on radionuclide transport processes played a role in our understanding of mineral cycles and energy flows in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. He led the development of the PATHWAY foodchain transport model to predict internal doses from fallout radionuclides to residents of nine states near the Nevada Test Site. He also was a pioneer in using field measurement data to test the accuracy of computer models for prediction of radionuclide behavior in the environment.