Abstract: This paper deals with in brief the progress of river geomorphological re searches in foreign countries in four stages as follows.1) About one or two thousand years ago, that was in the embryonic stage, the Greeks the Romans and the Arabs had already known some phenomena in river geomorphology.2) During the second stage, in the Renaissance and the 18th century, rivers and their erosion were widely studied by many scholars from Europen countries, because of the development in hydraulic engineering. In the 1800's, studies on different stages about the development of river geomorphology began.The embryo of quantitative approach emerged as the time reguired. Lomonosove proposed a conception of interaction between endogenic and exo-genic forces, and F.Hutton advanced thet heory of river erosion. They have made important contributions.3) In the third stage study of river geomorphology was on the upgrade In the 19th century a lot of scholars proved that stream erosion is one of the most important factors which sculpture the landforms on the earth surface and criticized the Diluvialism for landform f ormation. The development of waterways promoted the study of river geomorphology in Russja. In the meantime, the requirement of exploiting the west U.S developed the theory of river erosion rapidly and took the lead in studying it. Davis Erosion Cycle theory became a classical one in studying river erosion.4) From the 80th century on, a new stage in studying river geomorphology has come. Introduction of knowledge about fluvial dynamics and hydraulics and application of the mathe-physical methods have influenced the study of river geomorphology widely and deeply, have given the classical theory more precise physical meaning, and thus have promoted the study of river geomorphology by quantitative methods. All the factors, such as Horton's drainage network theory, Machin's "graded" conception, experimental study and mathematical simulation, deeper study of river valley, establishment of different models about delta developing and study of formation and change of river patterns from different angles have all made great progress in recent study of river geomorphology.Finally, some modern techniques and methods are also discussed, all of which will open up the way to a bright future for the study of river geomor phology.