Some well-known people have contributed a lot to geography. In fact these people can be called as geography makers or geography creators. A brief description of these people is given below :
Pythagoras : A well known great greek philosopher and mathematician thought the earth as sphere in his calculations. He thought that earth revolves round with other planets around a central fire. Pythagoras theorem in mathematics is a famous theorem.
Herodotus : He was a Greek historian who existed between 484 BC to 425 BC. He travelled a lot and gave information about ancient Greece, North Africa and the Middle East. He wrote a book on his findings entitled, History. He was the first man to use the famous saying, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”. He created the term ‘delta’ for the flood plain, at the mouth of the Nile. He expressed the process of the deposition of silt in the Nile delta.
Aristotle : He was also a great Greek philosopher who invented many scientific things. He existed from 384-322 B.C. He was the first to explain the eclipse formation. He is considered as the father of biology.
Ferdinand Magellan : He was a French traveller. He made a journey of the earth from Paris in the sea and came back to the source place and showed that earth is round. These were the new dimensions given by him.
Eratosthenes : (276-194 B.C.) : He was a Greek poet, mathematician and geographer. He measured the circumference of the earth with great accuracy by observing the angle of the noon day sun at Syene and at Alexandria. It was a big contribution to geography.
Hipparchus (190-120 B.C.) : He was a great Greek astronomer. He devised a method of locating geographical positions by means of latitudes and longitudes.
Ptolemy (2nd centurey A.D.) : He was a Greek astronomer and mathematician. He lived and worked in Egypt. He wrote the book Geographie. It describes all the places of the world as known to them at that time. His works, based on latitudes and longitudes, inflence map-makers for hundreds of years. He evolved the science of map-making.
Al Idrisi (1099-1154 A.D.) : He was an Arab geographer and scientist. He wrote one of the greatest geographic works of the medieval world. He gave a description of the Earth that contains information from his own travels and reports from others.
Unfortunately none of his books, which were written in Arabic, was translated into Latin or any other western language until the nineteenth century.
Ibn Battuta (1304-1377 AD) : He was the greatest of All Muslim travellers. Born in Tangier, he spent most of his time travelling distant places. We know about him from the book Travels which he wrote.
Marco Polo : He was a eastern traveller of his period. He was the first traveller to trace route across the entire length of Asia, naming and describing kingdoms he has seen.
Henry, the Navigator (1394-1460) : He was a Prince of Protugal. He did not go on any voyages but he set up an observatory and established the first school of navigation. He gave instruction through Arab teachers who did much to spread the knowledge of geography.
With the discovery of the New World by the Portuguese, new routes to the East and the West had to be mapped.
Newly found coasts, lands and seas had to be named and mapped. All this formed a new phase of geopgraphy. This was followed by the capes and bays method of learning which meant memorizing geographical facts. In the 17th century, geography was included in the school curriculum because it had practical utility in navigation.
Bernhardus Varenius (1622-1650) : He was a German geographer. He wrote Geographica Generalis, the most highly regarded treatise on geography for more than a century. He divided geography into two parts–general geography and special geography.
Immanual Kant : (1724-1804) : He was a German philosopher, and is considered by many to be one of the most influencial thinkers of modern times. He made foundations for geography within the framework of other sciences. According to him all knowledge can be divided into three groups according to the object of study.
The first is the study of sciences like botany, geology, and sociology. The second is the historical sciences. Geographical science was the third, that studied things that are associated in space.
Baron Von Humboldt (1769-1859) : He was a German naturalist and explorer. He was interested in all aspects of natural history and has been descibed by Charles Darwin as ‘the greatest scientific traveller that ever lived.’
He wrote a five-volume book Kosmos in which he set forth not only his vast scientific knowledge but also his interest in physical and biological features. He gave descriptions of areas and by comparing them with other lands, he set the tone for scientific geography.
He invented the isotherms to compare temperatures.
Carl Ritter (1779-1859) : He was a German geographer and is considered the founder of modern geographic study. He gave the importance of using all the sciences in the study of geography.
His most important work Die Erdkunds (Earth Science) emphasized the influence of physical environment on human activity. He divided the earth into natural regions. His plan of study became the model for regional study.
Elisworth Huntington (1876-1947) : He was an American geographer and explorer. He has been famous for his study on the effects of climate on human heredity and civilization. Until now teaching of geography consisted of the study of climate, plant and animals and landforms. The human aspect was neglected to a great extent. His approach to geographic study is known as determinism in which humans are passive agents while the physical environment is active.
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