Norton Sidney Ginsburg
Geographer Norton Sidney Ginsburg, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, passed away recently of natural causes on July 30, 2007, at the age of 85. A native Chicagoan born August 24, 1921, he was an alumnus (BA, MA, and PhD) of the University of Chicago, earning his doctorate in 1949. Ginsburg was a former president of the Association of American Geographers, Senior Fellow and for a brief time Dean at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and Director of the Institute of Environment and Policy at the East-West Center.
Ginsburg served as a geographer in the U.S. Army Map Service during 1941-42 and in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942-46. He was a professor of geography at the University of Chicago from 1951 to 1986. In the 1960s, Ginsburg served as associate dean of the Social Science Division, and later as chairman of the Department of Geography (1978-1985). Following his retirement from the University he became Director of the Environment and Policy Institute of the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, a post he held for five years. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1983.
Ginsburg’s academic interests focused principally on the Far East. He was coauthor of The Pattern of Asia (1958), principal author of the Atlas of Economic Development (1960), and co-editor of seven multi-authored works on the economic development and urbanization of East and Southeast Asia. In 1990, a series of lectures he gave was published as The Urban Transition: Reflections on the American and Asian Experiences by the Chinese University Press of Hong Kong. Ginsburg provided editorial oversight for Southeast Asian volumes of area handbooks published for the Human Relations Area Files in the 1950s. He also contributed as editorial consultant to the Aldine Publishing Company and the Denoyer-Geppert map company in the 1970s, and the Ocean Yearbook in the 1980s and 90s.
Ginsburg was a long-time member of the AAG, serving as secretary from 1963–64 before becoming president in 1969–70. In 1959, he received the Association’s Meritorius Achievement Award. He was also the subject of two interviews recorded in Geographers on Film (1971 and 1995).
Norton S. Ginsburg (Necrology). 2007. AAG Newsletter 42(7): 20.
