PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: geography
German explorer and naturalist
Alexander von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer who was a major figure in the classical period of physical geography and biogeography—areas of science now included in the Earth sciences and...
Persian scholar and scientist
Al-Bīrūnī was a Muslim astronomer, mathematician, ethnographist, anthropologist, historian, and geographer. Al-Bīrūnī lived during a period of unusual political turmoil in the eastern Islamic world. He...
Egyptian astronomer, mathematician, and geographer
Ptolemy was an Egyptian astronomer, mathematician, and geographer of Greek descent who flourished in Alexandria during the 2nd century ce. In several fields his writings represent the culminating achievement...
Greek geographer and historian
Strabo was a Greek geographer and historian whose Geography is the only extant work covering the whole range of peoples and countries known to both Greeks and Romans during the reign of Augustus (27 bce–14...
American explorer, geologist, and ethnologist
John Wesley Powell was an American explorer, geologist, and ethnologist, best known for his exploration of the upper portion of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell was the fourth child of English...
British geographer
Richard Hakluyt was an English geographer noted for his political influence, his voluminous writings, and his persistent promotion of Elizabethan overseas expansion, especially the colonization of North...
British political geographer
Halford Mackinder was a British political geographer noted for his work as an educator and for his geopolitical conception of the globe as divided into two camps, the ascendant Eurasian “heartland” and...
Prussian-Estonian embryologist
Karl Ernst von Baer was a Prussian-Estonian embryologist who discovered the mammalian ovum and the notochord and established the new science of comparative embryology alongside comparative anatomy. He...
Arab geographer
Muḥammad al-Idrīsī was an Arab geographer and adviser to Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. He wrote one of the greatest works of medieval geography, Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq (“The...
Arab historian
Al-Masʿūdī was a historian and traveler, known as the “Herodotus of the Arabs.” He was the first Arab to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Murūj al-dhahab wa maʿādin al-jawāhir...
German geographer
Carl Ritter was a German geographer who was a cofounder, with Alexander von Humboldt, of modern geographical science. Ritter received an excellent education in the natural sciences and was well versed...
German geologist
Leopold, Baron von Buch was a geologist and geographer whose far-flung wanderings and lucid writings had an inestimable influence on the development of geology during the 19th century. From 1790 to 1793...
Chinese mathematician and astronomer
Li Zhizao was a Chinese mathematician, astronomer, and geographer whose translations of European scientific books greatly contributed to the spread of Western science in China. Originally from a military...
German geographer
Alfred Hettner was a German geographer who sought to place geography on a firm philosophical and scientific foundation. He strongly influenced the modern development of geography in Germany. While completing...
German geographer
Friedrich Ratzel was a German geographer and ethnographer and a principal influence in the modern development of both disciplines. He originated the concept of Lebensraum, or “living space,” which relates...
German geographer and explorer
Heinrich Barth was a German geographer and one of the great explorers of Africa. Educated in the classics at the University of Berlin, Barth was a competent linguist who was fluent in French, Spanish,...
French geographer
Élisée Reclus was a French geographer and anarchist who was awarded the gold medal of the Paris Geographical Society in 1892 for La Nouvelle Géographie universelle. He was educated at the Protestant college...
Scottish physician and antiquarian
Sir Robert Sibbald was a Scottish physician and antiquarian, who became the first professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1685), which became thereafter, for more than a century, one of the...
British geographer and meteorologist
Hugh Robert Mill was a British geographer and meteorologist who exercised a great influence in the reform of geography teaching and on the development of meteorology. Mill was educated at Edinburgh University,...
Turkish historian
Kâtip Çelebi was a Turkish historian, geographer, and bibliographer. Kâtip became an army clerk and took part in many campaigns in the east, meanwhile collecting material for his historical works. As a...
British geographer
James Rennell was the leading British geographer of his time. Rennell constructed the first nearly accurate map of India and published A Bengal Atlas (1779), a work important for British strategic and...
German geographer
Ferdinand Paul Wilhelm, baron von Richthofen was a German geographer and geologist who produced a major work on China and contributed to the development of geographical methodology. He also helped establish...
English explorer
David Thompson was an English explorer, geographer, and fur trader in the western parts of what are now Canada and the United States. He was the first white man to explore the Columbia River from source...
Roman author
Pomponius Mela was the author of the only ancient treatise on geography in classical Latin, De situ orbis (“A Description of the World”), also known as De chorographia (“Concerning Chorography”). Written...
American geographer
William Morris Davis was a U.S. geographer, geologist, and meteorologist who founded the science of geomorphology, the study of landforms. In 1870 he began three years of service as a meteorologist with...
British geographer and hydrographer
Alexander Dalrymple was a Scottish geographer, the first hydrographer of the British Admiralty and proponent of the existence of a vast, populous continent in the South Pacific, which he called the Great...
French geographer
Paul Vidal de La Blache was a French geographer who had a profound influence on the development of modern geography. Vidal studied history and geography at the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, and taught...
Portuguese geographer and navigator
Martin Behaim was a navigator and geographer whose Nürnberg Terrestrial Globe is the earliest surviving globe, the most common general-use model of spherical Earth. Behaim first visited Portugal about...
British geographer and cartographer
Aaron Arrowsmith was a British geographer and cartographer who engraved and published many fine maps and atlases based on the best available sources of the day. Without a formal education Arrowsmith went...
American geologist
Arnold Henry Guyot was a Swiss-born American geologist, geographer, and educator whose extensive meteorological observations led to the founding of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The guyot, a flat-topped volcanic...
French cartographer
Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville was a French geographer and cartographer who greatly improved the standards of map-making. From an early age d’Anville continued the reform of French cartography begun...
geographer
Albrecht Penck was a geographer, who exercised a major influence on the development of modern German geography, and a geologist, who founded Pleistocene stratigraphy (the study of Ice Age Earth strata,...
Chinese historian
Wei Yuan was a historian and geographer of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12). Wei was a leader in the Statecraft school, which attempted to combine traditional scholarly knowledge with practical experience...
American geographer and educator
Isaiah Bowman was a geographer and educator who helped establish the American Geographical Society’s international standing during his 20 years as its director. A graduate of Harvard University (1905),...
French historian
André Duchesne was a historian and geographer, sometimes called the father of French history, who was the first to make critical collections of sources for national histories. Duchesne was educated at...
Roman philosopher, geographer, and historian
Alexander Polyhistor was a philosopher, geographer, and historian whose fragmentary writings provide valuable information on antiquarian and Jewish subjects. Imprisoned by the Romans in the war of the...
American geographer
Ellen Churchill Semple was an American geographer known for promoting the view that the physical environment determines human history and culture, an idea that provoked much controversy until superseded...
Arab author
Al-Hamdānī was an Arab geographer, poet, grammarian, historian, and astronomer whose chief fame derives from his authoritative writings on South Arabian history and geography. From his literary production,...
German geographer
Bernhardus Varenius was a major figure in the revival of geographic learning in Europe, whose scholarly general geography remained the accepted standard authority for more than a century. Born Bernhard...
Russian zoologist
Lev Simonovich Berg was a geographer and zoologist who established the foundations of limnology in Russia with his systematic studies on the physical, chemical, and biological conditions of fresh waters,...
American geographer
Jedidiah Morse was an American Congregational minister and geographer, who was the author of the first textbook on American geography published in the United States, Geography Made Easy (1784). His geographical...
American geographer
Ellsworth Huntington was a U.S. geographer who explored the influence of climate on civilization. An instructor at Euphrates College, Harput, Tur. (1897–1901), Huntington explored the canyons of the Euphrates...
German scholar
Sebastian Münster was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and Hebrew scholar whose Cosmographia (1544; “Cosmography”) was the earliest German description of the world and a major work in the revival of...
American geographer
Carl O. Sauer was an American geographer who was an authority on desert studies, tropical areas, the human geography of American Indians, and agriculture and native crops of the New World. He obtained...
Italian geographer and author
Giovanni Battista Ramusio was an Italian geographer who compiled an important collection of travel writings, Delle navigationi et viaggi (1550–59; “Some Voyages and Travels”), containing his version of...
German geographer
Philipp Clüver was a German geographer, a principal figure in the revival of geographic learning in Europe and the founder of historical geography. After becoming a soldier and then traveling throughout...
British explorer
Douglas Freshfield was a British mountaineer, explorer, geographer, and author who advocated the recognition of geography as an independent discipline in English universities (from 1884). On an expedition...
French geographer
Jean Gottman was a French geographer who introduced the concept and term megalopolis for large urban configurations. A research assistant in human geography at the Sorbonne (1937–41), Gottman was consultant...
Italian naturalist and explorer
Giacomo Doria was an Italian naturalist and explorer who in 1867 founded the civic museum of natural history in Genoa and conducted important research in systematic zoology. Doria’s first major expedition...
French geographer and cartographer
Philippe Buache was a French geographer and cartographer who contributed to the theory of physical geography. Buache worked for his father-in-law, the cartographer Guillaume Delisle, and became royal geographer...
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