Erwin Raisz (1 March 1893,Lőcse,Hungary – 1 December 1968,Bangkok,Thailand) was aHungarian-born Americancartographer, best known for hisphysiographic maps oflandforms.

Born inLőcse, Hungary (now part ofSlovakia) in 1893, Raisz was the son of a civil engineer who introduced him tomaps through his work. He received his degree in civil engineering and architecture from theBudapest University of Technology and Economics (Royal Polytechnicum) inBudapest in 1914.

Raisz served in the army duringWorld War I, and emigrated to New York in 1923. He worked for the Ohman Map Company while studying for his 1929 Ph.D. atColumbia University. He offered a course in cartography while a student, one of the first such in the United States.^[1]

In 1931 he joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration atHarvard University, where he taughtcartography and was curator of the map collection for 20 years. He created a significant body of work using hand-drawn pen-and-ink techniques, which during that period were largely being replaced by photo-mechanical processes and scribing. Because they were hand-drawn, his maps and graphics have a distinctive look to them, unique to his hand.

He was author of the first cartography textbook in English,General cartography (1938).

Raisz is best known for hisphysiographic maps, which describe landforms using his "orthoapsidal"Armadillo projection (essentially a small-scale variation on anisometric projection).^[2] Created for continents, nations and states, they form a solid corpus of work whose use continues today. Raisz Landform Maps, operated by his family, continues to publish much of his work.

He travelled extensively for his work and died in Bangkok on December 1, 1968, en route to present a paper at the 11thInternational Geographical Congress meeting inNew Delhi.^[3]

• Biography of Raisz on the Raisz Landform Maps web site.
• Designerati: Cartographers - Erwin Raisz
• Robinson, Arthur H. (March 1970). "Erwin Josephus Raisz, 1893–1968".Annals of the Association of American Geographers.60 (1):189–93.doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1970.tb00712.x.ISSN 0004-5608.
• ICC-Preconference-Workshop: Atlases and Infographics, Tokyo, 2019/07/13Erwin Raisz‘ Atlases – an early multi-method approach to cartographic communication, by Eric Losang of Leibniz Institute fur Landerkunde (Leibniz Association)

• Raisz, Erwin Josephus (1938).General cartography. McGraw-Hill Series in Geography. New York; London: McGraw-Hill Book Company.LCCN 39027007..
• Raisz, Erwin Josephus (1948).General cartography. McGraw-Hill Series in Geography (2d ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.LCCN 48009621.

• American cartographers
• Harvard University faculty
• 1893 births
• 1968 deaths
• Hungarian cartographers
• Columbia University alumni
• Hungarian emigrants to the United States
• Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I
• 20th-century cartographers

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• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards