John A. Cherry

John Anthony Cherry (born July 4, 1941) is a Canadian hydrogeology researcher and university professor.

He was the recipient of the 2016 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, awarded at Singapore International Water Week in July 2016 for his work in groundwater research, protection and management. In 2020, Cherry received the Stockholm Water Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He revolutionized the field of groundwater research by researching the migration of contaminants in groundwater and developing technologies for groundwater monitoring and remediation. His research resulted in a "paradigm shift in groundwater pollution control measures", leading to new groundwater remediation guidelines to be adopted in the United States and other countries in the 1990s.

Career Cherry holds geological engineering degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and University of California Berkeley, and earned a PhD in geology with specialization in hydrogeology from the University of Illinois. Cherry has also urged governments to devote more of their budget to groundwater monitoring, noting that unlike sewage treatment, it is not as politically popular because its benefits appear only over the long term. Currently comprising 16 universities, it gives graduate students the chance to conduct research on contaminated industrial sites, much as John Cherry had done himself before.

Cherry plans to use the S$300,000 (US$222,000) prize money of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize to update the "Groundwater" textbook, translating it into different languages and putting it online as a "wiki book".

He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 for contributions to understanding contaminant migration and development of engineered systems for groundwater remediation.

He co-holds several patents, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.