Ageographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study isgeography, the study of Earth'snatural 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 aMiddle French word that is believed to have been first used in 1540.[2]
Although geographers are historically known as people who makemaps, map making is actually the field of study ofcartography, 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 byJohannes Vermeer titledThe Geographer andThe 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.
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]
The four traditions of geography were proposed in 1964 by William D. Pattison in a paper titled "The Four Traditions of Geography" appearing in theJournal of Geography.[5][8] These traditions are:
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 theVautrin Lud Prize.
Doreen Massey (1944–2016) – scholar in the space and places ofglobalization and its pluralities; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
Edward Soja (1940–2015) – worked on regional development, planning and governance and coined the termssynekism and postmetropolis; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
^Marsh, William M. (2013).Physical geography : great systems and global environments. Martin M. Kaufman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-76428-5.OCLC797965742.
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