The prize council of the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water recently announced that Professor Charles Harvey and his research team will receive the Groundwater Prize for determining the likely pathway by which arsenic has been contaminating the drinking water in Bangladesh. This phenomenon, referred to as “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history” puzzled scientists, world health agencies and the Bangladeshi government for nearly 30 years. The prize council said: “Dr. Harvey and his group give an excellent example of the application of scientific methods to solve a specific problem, following the issue for more than 10 years until arriving at a plausible, yet stunning result, which not only answers a major puzzle in groundwater hydrology, but which more generally demonstrates that complex natural systems can be understood.”