In memoriam: Professor Jean Cunge
Professor Jean Cunge, who enriched many IHE Delft students’ learning journeys with his engaging teaching, passed away on 2 October 2023.
Cunge first came to IHE Delft as a guest lecturer in the late 1990s, and in the early 2000s became a professor in the Institute’s Department of Hydroinformatics and Knowledge Management. In 2012, the Institute named him an Honorary Fellow to recognize his contributions.
Students taking part in Cunge’s hydraulics classes listened with rapt attention as he drew on his sense of humor and experience from Électricité de France to make complex topics easy to understand. He was a caring teacher who gently pushed his students to perform their best.
Cunge challenged his students to include experts from other fields – such as social science and economics – as they tackled problems. He was an early adopter of collaborative engineering, and as part of this, his IHE Delft students worked with peers in France, Germany and Hungary using online resources.
Cunge also is known for authoring the seminal book ‘Practical Aspects of Computational River Hydraulics’, which remains in frequent use today, four decades after it was published in 1980.
In addition, Cunge played a key role in the European Union project ‘European Thematic Network of Education and Training for Environment – Water’ (ETNET21), which paved the way for knowledge transfer for environment and water through education networks and student mobility within Europe, and for the sharing of the credit concept with other regions.
For more details, please contact:
e-mail: i.popescu@un-ihe.org