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Persons influential in geography
A geographer is a scientist who studies Earth's physical environment and human habitat. Geographers are historically known for making maps, the subdiscipline of geography known as cartography. They study the physical details of the environment and also its effect on human and wildlife ecologies, weather and climate patterns, economics, and culture. Geographers focus on the spatial relationships between these elements.

Influential physical geographers



 * Eratosthenes (276 – 194 BC) – who made the first known reliable estimation of the Earth's size. He is considered the father of geodesy.
 * Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168) – who compiled Greek and Roman knowledge to produce the book Geographia.
 * Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973 – 1048 AD) – considered the father of geodesy.
 * Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037) – whose observations in Kitab Al-Shifa contributed to later formulations of the law of superposition and concept of uniformitarianism.
 * Muhammad al-Idrisi (Dreses, 1100 – c.1165) – who drew the Tabula Rogeriana, the most accurate world map in pre-modern times.
 * Piri Reis (1465 – c.1554) – whose Piri Reis map is the oldest surviving world map to include the Americas and possibly Antarctica
 * Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) – an innovative cartographer and originator of the Mercator projection.
 * Bernhardus Varenius (1622–1650) – Wrote his important work "General Geography" (1650) – first overview of the geography, the foundation of modern geography.
 * Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) – father of Russian geography and founded the study of glaciology.
 * Alexander Von Humboldt (1769–1859) – considered the father of modern geography. Published Kosmos and founded the study of biogeography.
 * Arnold Henry Guyot (1807–1884) – who noted the structure of glaciers and advanced the understanding of glacial motion, especially in fast ice flow.
 * Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) – the author of a glacial theory which disputed the notion of a steady-cooling Earth.
 * Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) – founder of modern biogeography and the Wallace line.
 * Vasily Dokuchaev (1846–1903) – patriarch of Russian geography and founder of pedology.
 * Wladimir Peter Köppen (1846–1940) – developer of most important climate classification and founder of Paleoclimatology.
 * William Morris Davis (1850–1934) – father of American geography, founder of Geomorphology and developer of the geographical cycle theory.
 * Walther Penck (1888–1923) – proponent of the cycle of erosion and the simultaneous occurrence of uplift and denudation.
 * Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) – Antarctic explorer during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
 * Robert E. Horton (1875–1945) – founder of modern hydrology and concepts such as infiltration capacity and overland flow.
 * J Harlen Bretz (1882–1981) – pioneer of research into the shaping of landscapes by catastrophic floods, most notably the Bretz (Missoula) floods.
 * Willi Dansgaard (born 1922) – palaeoclimatologist and quaternary scientist, instrumental in the use of oxygen-isotope dating and co-identifier of Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
 * Hans Oeschger (1927–1998) – palaeoclimatologist and pioneer in ice core research, co-identifier of Dansgaard-Orschger events.
 * Richard Chorley (1927–2002) – a key contributor to the quantitative revolution and the use of systems theory in geography.
 * Sir Nicholas Shackleton (1937–2006) – who demonstrated that oscillations in climate over the past few million years could be correlated with variations in the orbital and positional relationship between the Earth and the Sun.
 * Stefan Rahmstorf (born 1960) – professor of abrupt climate changes and author on theories of thermohaline dynamics.

Influential human geographers

 * Carl Ritter (1779–1859) – considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern geography and first chair in geography at the Humboldt University of Berlin, also noted for his use of organic analogy in his works.
 * Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) – environmental determinist, invented the term Lebensraum
 * Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918) – founder of the French School of geopolitics and possibilism.
 * Sir Halford John Mackinder (1861–1947) – author of The Geographical Pivot of History, co-founder of the London School of Economics, along with the Geographical Association.
 * Carl O. Sauer (1889–1975) – critic of environmental determinism and proponent of cultural ecology.
 * Walter Christaller (1893–1969) – economic geographer and developer of the central place theory.
 * Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) – scholar of the history and philosophy of geography.
 * Torsten Hägerstrand (1916–2004) – critic of the quantitative revolution and regional science, noted figure in critical geography.
 * Milton Santos (1926–2001) winner of the Vautrin Lud prize in 1994, one of the most important geographers in South America.
 * Waldo R. Tobler (born 1930) – developer of the First law of geography.
 * Yi-Fu Tuan (born 1930) A Chinese-American geographer.
 * David Harvey (born 1935) – world's most cited academic geographer and winner of the Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud, also noted for his work in critical geography and critique of global capitalism.
 * Evelyn Stokes (1936–2005). Professor of geography at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Known for recognizing inequality with marginalized groups including women and Māori using geography.
 * Allen J. Scott (born 1938) – winner of Vautrin Lud Prize in 2003 and the Anders Retzius Gold medal 2009; author of numerous books and papers on economic and urban geography, known for his work on regional development, new industrial spaces, agglomeration theory, global city-regions and the cultural economy.
 * Edward Soja (born 1941) – noted for his work on regional development, planning and governance, along with coining the terms synekism and postmetropolis.
 * Doreen Massey (born 1944) – key scholar in the space and places of globalization and its pluralities, winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
 * Michael Watts, Class of 1963 Professor of Geography and Development Studies, University of California, Berkeley
 * Nigel Thrift (born 1949) – developer of non-representational theory.
 * Derek Gregory (born 1951) – famous for writing on the Israeli, U.S. and UK actions in the Middle East after 9/11, influenced by Edward Said and has contributed work on imagined geographies.
 * Cindi Katz (born 1954) – who writes on social reproduction and the production of space. Writing on children's geographies, place and nature, everyday life and security.
 * Gillian Rose (born 1962) – most famous for her critique: Feminism & Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (1993) – which was one of the first moves towards a development of feminist geography.