Geographers

• Jacques Bertin
  30 May 2015, by G. P.

  Jacques Bertin (1918-2010) was a French cartographer whose main contribution was his theoretical and practical reflection on the use of graphic material (diagrams, «maps» and graphs). This was the subject of a ground-breaking treatise that was published in 1967: ’La sémiologie graphique’ (Graphic Semiology). Bertin’s influence has not only been strong in modern cartography studies at university level, it has also influenced statisticians and data visualization (...)

• Friedrich Ratzel
  30 May 2015, by L. G. S.

  Friedrich Ratzel is viewed as one of the founders of German geopolitics, which he provided with a theoretical corpus. He was influenced both by the scientific thought of his time and by the pan-germanism of Wilhelmine Germany, and he was one of the first to theorise the relationships between the power of a State, its peoples and its territorial expanse.
  Ratzel was born in Karlsruhe in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and he was still young at the time of the process of unification of Germany (...)

• Pierre Gourou
  28 March 2015, by M. B.

  Pierre Gourou (1900 to 1999) lived through the 20th century, and his work spreads over an exceptionally long period. The list of his works, numbering some fourteen, is as abundant after 1970 as before. Indeed, as he himself said, the text expressing his thought in its most completed form, Terres de bonne espérance, le monde tropical, dates from 1982, thus published when he was already very advanced in age. His work spans sixty years, from Tonkin in 1931 to L’Afrique Tropicale, nain ou (...)

• Elisée Reclus
  28 March 2015, by Ph. P.

  Jacques Elisée Reclus (1830-1905), always called Elisée, was born on March 15th 1930 in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde, in south-west France, and died in Thourout, near Ghent, in Belgium in the night of the 3rd to the 4th July 1905. He was a geographer, fought for the Commune in Paris, was a member of the Bakunin International and a militant anarchist.
  He was one of a family of thirteen children. His father ,Jacques Reclus (1796-1882) was a clergyman in a strict, independent evangelical (...)

• Jean Gottmann
  25 February 2015, by G. Pr.

  Jean Gottmann (1915-1994) was an atypical French geographer. Attentive to global changes and the influence of English-speaking geographers, he defended geographical tradition while at the same time modernising it and attempting to remove its theoretical and methodological failings. He thus stands out both from those who remained rooted in a classic, regional approach, and from those who adopted the "revolutionary" trends. His ideas were often out of step with consensus in the discipline. (...)

• Ibn Kahldun
  15 February 2015, by H. C.

  Ibn Kahldun (Tunis, 27th May 1332 – Cairo, 17th March 1406)
  The medieval scholar Edouard Perroy, in his book Le Moyen Age (PUF 1955), refers to the chapters devoted to the 14th century as covering "difficult times". The period was difficult for Christian Europe (the 100 years war, famine, the Plague) and also for the Moslem world – the dream of the unity of Islam was gone, and the Empire established by Mohammed and his successors was fragmented into a multitude of rival (...)

• Alexander Humboldt
  6 July 2014, by L. P.

  Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859). Along with «Karl Ritter», Alexander von Humboldt is considered to be one of the fathers of modern geography, although at the outset nothing seemed to destine him for the discipline. His work appears first of all as following on from both the encyclopaedic and the universalist traditions – the German Aufklärung and the French Enlightenment. Thus his work draws at once on the notions of Kant, among which Sapere Aude, and on Rousseau, in particular the (...)

• Karl Ritter
  6 July 2014, by Ségolène Debarre

  Karl Ritter (1779-1859). "Genius of geography ", "founder " of modern geography – there are numerous laudatory epithets to refer to this geographer who for nearly forty years, from 1820 to 1859, occupied the chair of geography, ethnology and history (Länder- und Völkerkunde und der Geschichte) in Berlin university . Karl Ritter is however a geographer who is not easy to approach, his work is complex and often obscure, and is little read today and only partially translated . He is (...)

• Maximilien Sorre
  5 July 2014, by J.-L. T.

  Maximilien Sorre (1880-1962), also known as Max Sorre, was a French geographer who, in the first half of the 20th century, was the advocate and developer of the intuitions and orientations proposed by P. Vidal de la Blache. The successive dedications of his works, starting with his thesis in 1913, Les Pyrénées méditerranéennes – Etude de géographie biologique, reflect this scientific and epistemological filiation, and the importance given to the paradigm of the relationship of Man (...)

• Emmanuel de Martonne
  5 July 2014, by P. M.

  Emmanuel de Martonne (Chabris 1873 - Sceaux 1955) is one of the dominant figures in French geography in the first half of the 20th century. He was a disciple of P. Vidal de la Blache, and is known in France as the founder of general physical geography, and more specifically as a specialist in geomorphology. In the course of a career lasting nearly 50 years, he had a profound influence on academic geography by way of his teaching, his role in national and international university (...)

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