Scholar whose area of study is geography
A
geographer
is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is
geography
, the study of Earth's
natural environment
and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" and the Greek suffix, "graphy", meaning "description", so a geographer is someone who studies the earth.
[1]
The word "geography" is a
Middle French
word that is believed to have been first used in 1540.
[2]
Although geographers are historically known as people who make
maps
, map making is actually the field of study of
cartography
, a subset of geography. Geographers do not study only the details of the natural environment or human society, but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two. For example, they study how the natural environment contributes to human society and how human society affects the natural environment.
[3]
In particular, physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society and culture. Some geographers are practitioners of GIS (
geographic information system
) and are often employed by local, state, and federal government agencies as well as in the private sector by environmental and engineering firms.
[4]
The paintings by
Johannes Vermeer
titled
The Geographer
and
The Astronomer
are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting in 1668?69.
Areas of study in geography
[
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]
Subdividing geography is challenging, as the discipline is broad, interdisciplinary, ancient, and has been approached differently by different cultures. Attempts have gone back centuries, and include the "Four traditions of geography" and applied "branches."
[5]
[6]
[7]
Four traditions of geography
[
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]
The four traditions of geography were proposed in 1964 by
William D. Pattison
in a paper titled "The Four Traditions of Geography" appearing in the
Journal of Geography
.
[5]
[8]
These traditions are:
Branches of geography
[
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]
The
UNESCO
Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems
subdivides geography into three major fields of study, which are then further subdivided.
[6]
[7]
These are:
- Human geography
: including
urban geography
,
cultural geography
,
economic geography
,
political geography
,
historical geography
,
marketing geography
,
health geography
, and
social geography
.
[9]
- Physical geography
: including
geomorphology
,
hydrology
,
glaciology
,
biogeography
,
climatology
,
meteorology
,
pedology
,
oceanography
,
geodesy
, and
environmental geography
.
[10]
- Technical geography
: including
geoinformatics
,
Geographic information science
,
geovisualization
, and
spatial analysis
.
Five themes of geography
[
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]
The
National Geographic Society
identifies five broad key themes for geographers:
Notable geographers
[
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]
- Alexander von Humboldt
(1769?1859) ? published
Cosmos
and founder of the sub-field biogeography.
- Milton Santos
(1926?2001),He became known for his pioneering works in several branches of geography, notably urban development in developing countries.
- Arnold Henry Guyot
(1807?1884) ? noted the structure of glaciers and advanced understanding in
glacier motion
, especially in fast ice flow.
- Carl O. Sauer
(1889?1975) ? cultural geographer.
- Carl Ritter
(1779?1859) ? occupied the first chair of geography at Berlin University.
- David Harvey
(born 1935) ? Marxist geographer and author of theories on spatial and urban geography, winner of the
Vautrin Lud Prize
.
- Doreen Massey
(1944?2016) ? scholar in the space and places of
globalization
and its pluralities; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
- Edward Soja
(1940?2015) ? worked on regional development, planning and governance and coined the terms
synekism
and postmetropolis; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
- Ellen Churchill Semple
(1863?1932) ? first female president of the
American Association of Geographers
.
- Jovan Cviji?
(1865?1927) ? Serbian geographer, geologist, sociologist and human geographer; father of the karst geomorphology
- Eratosthenes
(
c.
276
? c.
195/194 BC
) ? calculated the size of the Earth.
- Ernest Burgess
(1886?1966) ? creator of the
concentric zone model
.
- Gerardus Mercator
(1512?1594) ? cartographer who produced the
Mercator projection
- John Francon Williams
(1854?1911) ? author of
The Geography of the Oceans
.
- Karl Butzer
(1934?2016) ? German-American geographer, cultural ecologist and environmental archaeologist.
- Michael Frank Goodchild
(born 1944) ? GIS scholar and winner of the RGS founder's medal in 2003.
- Muhammad al-Idrisi
(Arabic: ??? ??? ???? ???? ????????; Latin: Dreses) (1100?1165) ? author of Nuzhatul Mushtaq.
- Nigel Thrift
(born 1949) ? originator of
non-representational theory
.
- Paul Vidal de La Blache
(1845?1918) ? founder of the French school of geopolitics, wrote the principles of human geography.
- Ptolemy
(
c.
100
? c.
170
) ? compiled Greek and Roman knowledge into the book
Geographia
.
- Radhanath Sikdar
(1813?1870) ? calculated the height of
Mount Everest
.
- Roger Tomlinson
(1933 ? 2014) ? the primary originator of modern
geographic information systems
.
- Halford Mackinder
(1861?1947) ? co-founder of the
London School of Economics
,
Geographical Association
.
- Strabo
(64/63 BC ?
c.
AD 24
) ? wrote
Geographica
, one of the first books outlining the study of geography.
- Waldo Tobler
(1930-2018) ? coined the
first law of geography
.
- Walter Christaller
(1893?1969) ? human geographer and inventor of
central place theory
.
- William Morris Davis
(1850?1934) ? father of American geography and developer of the
cycle of erosion
.
- Yi-Fu Tuan
(1930-2022) ? Chinese-American scholar credited with starting
humanistic geography
as a discipline.
Institutions and societies
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]
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
Arrowsmith, Aaron
(1832). "Chapter II: The World".
A Grammar of Modern Geography
.
King's College School
. pp. 20?21.
Archived
from the original on 4 October 2021
. Retrieved
4 October
2021
.
- ^
"geography (n.)"
(Web article)
.
Online Etymology Dictionary
. Douglas Harper. n.d.
Archived
from the original on 1 August 2017
. Retrieved
10 October
2018
.
- ^
Pedley, Mary Sponberg;
Edney, Matthew H.
, eds. (2020).
The History of Cartography, Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment
.
University of Chicago Press
. pp. 557?558.
ISBN
9780226339221
.
Archived
from the original on 4 October 2021
. Retrieved
4 October
2021
.
- ^
"Geographers : Occupational Outlook Handbook : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics"
.
www.bls.gov
. Retrieved
6 October
2021
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Pattison, William (1964).
"The Four Traditions of Geography"
.
Journal of Geography
.
63
(5): 211?216.
doi
:
10.1080/00221346408985265
. Retrieved
27 August
2022
.
- ^
a
b
Sala, Maria (2009).
Geography Volume I
. Oxford, United Kingdom:
EOLSS
UNESCO.
ISBN
978-1-84826-960-6
.
- ^
a
b
Sala, Maria (2009).
Geography ? Vol. I: Geography
(PDF)
.
EOLSS
UNESCO
. Retrieved
30 December
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Murphy, Alexander (27 June 2014). "Geography's Crosscutting Themes: Golden Anniversary Reflections on "The Four Traditions of Geography"
".
Journal of Geography
.
113
(5): 181?188.
doi
:
10.1080/00221341.2014.918639
.
S2CID
143168559
.
- ^
Nel, Etienne (23 November 2010).
"The dictionary of human geography, 5th edition - Edited by Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael J. Watts and Sarah Whatmore"
.
New Zealand Geographer
.
66
(3): 234?236.
doi
:
10.1111/j.1745-7939.2010.01189_4.x
.
ISSN
0028-8144
.
- ^
Marsh, William M. (2013).
Physical geography : great systems and global environments
. Martin M. Kaufman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
978-0-521-76428-5
.
OCLC
797965742
.
- ^
"Geography Education @"
.
Nationalgeographic.com
. 24 October 2008. Archived from
the original
on 7 February 2010
. Retrieved
16 July
2013
.
- ^
Freeman, T. W.; James, Preston E.; Martin, Geoffrey J. (July 1980).
"The Association of American Geographers: The First Seventy-Five Years 1904-1979"
.
The Geographical Journal
.
146
(2): 298.
doi
:
10.2307/632894
.
ISSN
0016-7398
.
JSTOR
632894
.
- ^
"AGS History"
. 26 February 2009. Archived from
the original
on 26 February 2009
. Retrieved
11 October
2021
.
- ^
"National Geographic Society"
.
U.S. Department of State
. Retrieved
11 October
2021
.
- ^
"Royal Geographical Society - Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)"
.
www.rgs.org
. Retrieved
11 October
2021
.
Further reading
[
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]
External links
[
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]
Geography portal