Farouk El-Baz - Additional Notes

Additional Notes

• El-Baz piqued the interest of Biblical scholars around the world with his announcement of the so-called Kuwait River. The idea that a river once flowed across the deserts of Arabia, and somehow connected with the Tigris and/or Euphrates River, seemed far-fetched. Yet evidence for such a river came from the satellite radar images taken during the 1994 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Al-Baaz studied the images, and noticed that traces of a defunct river that crossed northern Arabia from west to east were visible beneath the sands, thanks to the ground-penetrating capabilities of the radar technologies. He called it the Kuwait River (also referred to as Wadi Al-Batin, an extension of Wadi Al-Rummah), for that is where it apparently connected with the Euphrates or emptied into the Persian Gulf.
• The popular science fiction television program Star Trek: The Next Generation featured a shuttlecraft named El-Baz.
• In a National Geographic documentary film in 2002, El-Baz proposed a new source for the shape of The Pyramids at Giza. El-Baz believes that the ancient Egyptians chose to bury their dead in pyramid shaped structures because they knew from an earlier nomadic life that monumental pyramidal landforms which abound in the Western Desert of Egypt, and evade erosion.
• In Episode 10 ("Galileo Was Right") of the TV series From the Earth to the Moon, (produced by Tom Hanks for HBO), his role in the training of the Apollo astronauts was featured in a segment entitled "The Brain of Farouk El-Baz." He was portrayed by actor Isa Totah.
• In 1978 Al-Baaz was appointed Science Adviser to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. He was charged with the selection of regions for land reclamation in the desert without detrimental effects on the environment. For his distinguished service, President Sadat awarded him Egypt's Order of Merit - First Class.
• He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including: the Golden Door Award of the International Institute of Boston; the Nevada Medal of the Desert Research Institute, and the Pioneer Award of the Arab Thought Foundation.