Martin R. Kaatz

Martin Richard Kaatz, a long-time geography professor at Central Washington University, died on November 24, 2012, from complications following heart surgery. He was 88.

Following service in U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1943-46 in the Phillippines and Japan, Kaatz earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in geography from the University of Michigan. In 1952, he joined the faculty at Central Washington University where his career spanned more than 40 years. He was a 1965-66 Fulbright scholar while teaching at Trinity College in Dublin. Kaatz served 15 years as chair of CWU’s Geography and Land Studies Department.

In addition to his academic service, Kaatz was involved in several organizations, boards, and committees, helping shape land use planning in Ellensburg, Wash., Kittitas County, and the Yakima River Basin. CWU honored him for his service naming him a Distinguished University Professor of Public Service in 1980. The Cascade Land Conservancy recognized his lifetime achievements in conservation in 2006. In 2011, He was honored by the City of Ellensburg for his many years of service to the city.

A memorial service was held on Mar. 23 in Ellensburg, Wash., at the Hal Holmes Center. The Martin Kaatz Geography Scholarship Fund has been established in his honor.

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Robert W. Durrenberger

Bob Durrenberger, Professor Emeritus of Geography at Arizona State University, and a noted climatologist, passed away on October 20, 2012, at the age of 94.

Robert Warren Durrenberger was born in Perham, Minnesota, on October 2, 1918, the second of John and Angela Durrenberger’s five children. Both his parents came from German immigrant families. His paternal great-grandfather, the first Durrenberger in the States, migrated from Württemberg in southern Germany in 1854 and settled as a farmer in the Minnesota River Valley. Likewise, both his maternal grandparents emigrated from Germany and settled in Minnesota.

Durrenberger began his higher education at Moorhead State Teachers College (now Minnesota State University Moorhead) in 1936, graduating four years later with a bachelor’s degree in education.

In October 1940 he enrolled in the United States Army but immediately attended California Institute of Technology for a year, earning a B.S. in meteorology in 1941. He then served in the Air Corps in the southwest Pacific as a meteorologist.

After the Second World War, he was honorably discharged as a Major. He then married Bernadine Ann Stiegel from Minnesota in July 1946 and embarked upon his graduate education. First he attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and studied for a master’s degree in geography, his advisor being the cartographer Arthur Robinson.

Having graduated in 1949, Durrenberger and his wife moved to California where they adopted two babies – Daniel in 1952 and Mary Ann in 1954 – and he pursued a doctorate in geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked under the supervision of Clifford Zierer, an expert in changing land use and urban expansion. His thesis, completed in 1955, was entitled “Climate as a Factor in the Production of Lemons in California.”

Durrenberger worked briefly at the University of Kentucky before being appointed to San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge) in 1956 where he was a founding faculty member of the geography department. During his time there he served as department chair and dean of graduate studies.

During his time in California Durrenberger consolidated his focus on arid land research, environmental problems, agricultural geography and the southwest United States. Among his publications specifically about the state were the atlas Patterns on the land: geographical, historical, and political maps of California (1957 with many later editions), the books California and the Western States (1963), Elements of California Geography (1968), and California, the Last Frontier (1969), and the edited volume California: its people, its problems, its prospects (1971).

Other important publications during this period were Environment and man; a bibliography (1970) which covered topics such as ecology, natural resources, pollution, climate and conservation, and Geographical research and writing (1971), an aide for students.

In 1971, Durrenberger moved to Arizona State University (ASU) as a full-time professor of geography and continued with his research into the environmental challenges presented by rapid population and economic growth of the American southwest. Among his publications during this period was the Dictionary of the environmental sciences (1973) which explained 4,000 terms and concepts concerned with the environment drawn from many academic disciplines.

In the early 1970s, the federal government decided to turn over responsibility for maintaining state climate records and assisting with state-focused climate questions from NOAA to the individual states. Durrenberger saw the opportunity to situate the Arizona State Climate Office at ASU. The state named him as Arizona’s first state climatologist in 1973. He was also the President of the American Association of State Climatologists in 1978-1979.

In the role of state climatologist, Durrenberger authored numerous publications specifically relevant to Arizona, including studies of precipitation, historical storms and floods, drought, and climate and energy in various regions of the state. He also served as editor-at-large for the National Weather Digest, the journal of the National Weather Association.

Concurrently, Durrenberger developed the climatology program at ASU into an internationally-recognized center for teaching and research. At the same time the Arizona Board of Regents also established of the Laboratory of Climatology, an independent unit at ASU with a mission to serve the public, state agencies and businesses of Arizona by maintaining historical climate data for Arizona and conducting research in climate-related issues.

Minnesota State University Moorhead, where Durrenberger earned his undergraduate degree, presented him with its 1977 Distinguished Alumni Award, citing his contributions in education, climatology, and service to state and federal governments.

He stepped down from his post as state climatologist in 1979 and focused on solar energy development, directing a project to assess Arizona’s solar energy resources and authoring a report on a solar radiation monitoring system for Arizona. He also served on the executive board of the Solar Radiation Division of the American Section of the International Solar Energy Society.

Durrenberger retired in 1982 and settled in Sun City, Arizona, where he enjoyed golfing, playing bridge, and spending time with friends and family.

Bob was preceded in death by his son, Dan, but survived by his beloved wife of 66 years, Bernadine, his daughter, Mary Ann, as well as three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

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Jim Knox

James C. Knox died suddenly of heart failure on October 6, 2012.

Longtime Professor of Geography and the Evjue-Bascom Professor-at-Large at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW-Madison), Jim Knox is widely regarded as having transformed the subdiscipline of physical geography. In the process, he became one of the most recognized, honored physical geographers of his generation. During 43 years as a faculty member at UW-Madison, Knox’s research forever altered the field of fluvial geomorphology and opened new directions in scholarship that linked his field to broader environmental issues.

Knox grew up among the hills and valleys of southwest Wisconsin’s “Driftless Area”—a landscape he turned into a laboratory that provided far-ranging insights into the responses of river systems to climate variability and human intervention on time scales ranging from the Quaternary to the historical. Employing methods ranging from stratigraphy to geochemical analysis to the extraction of information from early land surveys—an approach he pioneered—Knox helped advance process-based approaches in geomorphology, even as he demonstrated how studies of earth-surface processes could yield insights into climate change—past, present and future.

Knox’s impact on physical geography and geography in general goes far beyond the extraordinary contributions of his scholarship. There is likely no living physical geographer who has produced more students who have gone on to assume positions of influence in the discipline than Jim Knox—so much so that one often hears reference to the “Knox School.” His pedagogic influence extends well beyond graduate education: he is widely known as an enthusiastic, demanding, and caring teacher who has sparked the interests of countless undergraduates through the years, including many who went on to pursue graduate work in geography.

Knox had significant success in efforts to advance his discipline, university, and department. He served as AAG National Councillor and was an Associate Editor of its flagship journal, the Annals of the AAG. He played important leadership roles in the geomorphology subsections of two different disciplinary associations: the AAG and the Geological Society of America. In addition, he chaired the Department of Geography at his home institution and assumed many other responsibilities on the University of Wisconsin campus. Knox served as a councilor for the American Quaternary Association and was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also served on numerous panels and advisory boards of the National Science Foundation.

Knox was born in Platteville, Wisconsin on November 29, 1941. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wisconsin State University in 1963 and a PhD from the University of Iowa in 1970.

In 2011, the AAG conferred one of its highest honors—AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors—on Knox, recognizing his extraordinary achievements in research, service, and disciplinary leadership.

James C. Knox (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(10): 22.

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Neil Smith

Neil Smith died of liver and kidney failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on September 29, 2012, at the age of 58. He was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he founded and for a number of years directed the interdisciplinary Center for Place, Culture, and Politics.

Smith was born and raised in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland. He attended the University of St. Andrews (with a year spent at the University of Pennsylvania, 1974-1975), taking a B.Sc. degree in 1977, to be followed by a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1982, where his advisor was David Harvey. He taught in the geography department at Columbia University from 1982-90 before moving to Rutgers.

Smith was a revolutionary force in the academic discipline of geography and beyond. A polarizing figure, his sharp wit and direct style could be taken harshly by those whose work was the aim of his critiques, while others recognized him as a role model for politically committed scholars. He influenced a generation of critical geographers and was one of the early organizers of the International Critical Geography Group. Smith’s work was widely read outside the discipline of geography, including in such fields as sociology, urban studies, anthropology and cultural studies and contributed to the “spatial turn” in the social sciences and humanities.

Entering a field often considered an intellectual backwater, Smith’s insightful scholarship and cogent arguments would imbue geography with an intellectual – and political – importance it had rarely before possessed. Originally on track to become a glacial geomorphologist (based on his love of Scottish landscapes), Smith’s interests gravitated toward the dynamics of urban change under the influence of St. Andrews lecturer Joe Doherty. Smith’s widely accepted “rent-gap” thesis, first published in a landmark article in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 1979 (based on his undergraduate thesis at St. Andrews), made clear that gentrification was a new strategy of capital accumulation actively restructuring urban space. Extended study of gentrification in New York City led to Smith’s influential book, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (1982), in which he argued that the dynamics of gentrification was rooted as much in culture (“revanchism” or class revenge, as the bourgeoisie sought to take back “their” city) as it was in economics. He linked the rise of zero-tolerance policing and the other “quality of life” initiatives of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to social changes taking place around the globe, jumping scales from a “localized urban anomaly” to a globalized “urban strategy.”

Smith’s arguments about gentrification were part of a much larger project examining the production of both nature and geographical space within capitalism. In Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (1984), Smith shows that nature is not simply transformed but actually produced, an insight foundational for the whole field of political ecology. He argued that to understand the workings of capitalism, we have to understand the way capitalism produces the very spaces that make its existence possible, a concept now central to much geographical work. Together his theories of the production of nature, space, and scale can be said to add up to a new, remarkably cogent theory of uneven capitalist development.

Smith’s later work examined powerful mid-twentieth century American geographer, university president, and advisor to presidents, Isaiah Bowman (a primary architect of Woodrow Wilson’s positions that led to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations), and led eventually to the publication of American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (2003), for which he received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography in 2004 and the AAG’s Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, also in 2004. Drawing together his various insights and a lifetime of Marxist scholarship, his final book was The Endgame of Globalization (2005).

Smith was also very active in organizing or co-organizing conferences and symposia, especially those of CUNY. He was frequently invited to give lectures both in the U.S. and abroad. He recently served as Visiting Professor at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), and in August 2012 he gave the keynote address, “For (Political) Climate Change” at the Geographing the Future Conference, hosted by the National University of Ireland, Galway. Smith was co-editor of the influential journal Society and Space and served on the editorial boards of Social Text and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, among others.

Neil Smith received distinguished scholarship honors from the AAG in 2000.

Neil Smith (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(10): 22.

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Gary Peters

Gary Peters was born in Marysville, California on March 20, 1941. After serving as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy he attended Yuba Junior College and then transferred to Chico State University, where he majored in Geography. He then obtained his Master’s Degree and PhD in Geography from Pennsylvania State University. Following the completion of his studies, Gary taught in the geography department at California State University Long Beach before finishing his career at Chico State University. Throughout his career Gary published ten books—including Population Geography: Problems, Concepts, and Prospects and American Winescapes: The Cultural Landscapes of America’s Wine Country—and numerous academic articles.

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Thelma Glass

Civil rights pioneer and longtime geography professor Thelma Glass has died at the age of 96.

Glass was a professor of geography at Alabama State University, where she taught for over 40 years. She was the last surviving member of the Women’s Political Council, which helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56, a key event in the civil rights movement.

Glass graduated with honors from the Alabama State Teachers College in 1941. She later attended the Teachers College at Columbia University, where she earned an M.A. in 1947.

John Knight, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Alabama State University, was one of Glass’s students. “She had such a pleasing personality, you felt welcome. You felt a sense of warmth. And she always challenged you academically to be the very best,” Knight was quoted as saying.[i]

Glass was the focus of a chapter written by Jan Monk and Sunita George with Juanita George, “Teachers and Their Times: Thelma Glass and Juanita Gaston,” published in The South’s Role in the Making of AmericanGeography: Centennial of the AAG, 2004, edited by J.O. Wheeler and Stanley Brunn.

Glass’s main interests in geography included local and regional research in economic, cultural, and physical geography; excellence in education to prepare students for careers in teaching, government, and industry; and the introduction of geography into senior high schools in Alabama. She was well known on campus as a teacher-activist willing to put the values she espoused into action. Glass was deeply committed to the development and future success of her students and sought to introduce them to a broad-based education through the contextualization provided by geography education.

In 2011, Glass received ASU’s Black and Gold Standard Award, a non-annual award that is given to the school’s most notable alumni. She received many teaching awards throughout her career. An auditorium is named for Glass on the Alabama State University campus.

[i] Johnson, Scott. “Civil Rights Pioneer Glass Dies.” Montgomery Advertiser, July 25, 2012. www.montgomeryadvertiser.com. Accessed August 1, 2012.

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Russell (Russ) B. Adams

Russell B. Adams, retired associate professor of geography, University of Minnesota, died on June 20, 2012, in Minneapolis, Minn., at the age of 86 following a long illness. In his final years he kept his mind busy by reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from start to finish, and regularly reading Science magazine cover to cover.

Adams was born on January 1, 1926, in Enderlin, N.D. Following U.S. Army service (1945-47), he entered the University of Minnesota where he earned his B.B.A (1949), B.S. (1952), M.A. (1955), and Ph.D. (1969). He interspersed his academic pursuits with applied geography activity off campus that drew on and enhanced his precocious mathematical and statistical skills: high school teacher (1952-3); programmer-analyst with Remington-Rand Univac (1957-8); assistant director of the Twin Cities Area Transportation Study (TCATS) with the Minnesota Department of Highways (1958-61); working with John R. Borchert on the Urban Research Program of the Upper Midwest Economic Study (1961-63); and wide-ranging consulting activity on rural transportation, urban development, and computer security problems. Besides his professional work, Adams was a nationally ranked chess and cribbage expert.

He joined the faculty of the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota in 1964, and in 1968 traveled extensively in the Soviet Union. Upon returning he assumed responsibility for the department’s courses on the USSR in addition to his regular courses in economic geography, advanced quantitative methods and transportation geography. He is survived by his three sons, Alexander, Byron, and Andrew, and their families.

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John Winberry

Geographer John Winberry died on March 8, 2012.

Winberry earned a PhD from Louisiana State University in 1971. He spent his entire professional career at the University of South Carolina, where he taught cultural geography and regional geography courses from 1971 until his retirement in 2004. Winberry served as Chair of the Geography Department from 1990-1993, and Associate Dean of the Graduate School from 1999-2002. At various times, he also served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Geography Department, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Acting Director of the Latin American Studies Program, Assistant to the Director of the Walker Institute of International Studies, and Associate Dean of the Graduate School. He retired in 2004 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Winberry was known for his passion in researching and teaching across the broad field of geography, which took him to Mexico, India, England, Ireland and Brazil. His U.S. research concentrated on the American South. He co-wrote the college-level textbook South Carolina: A Geography, and his 75 published writings reflect a wide range of interests, including log houses in Mexico, the kudzu vine in the U.S. South, the culture of indigo in South Carolina, sea turtle farming in the Cayman Islands, Confederate monuments in courthouse squares, and even an examination of varieties of South Carolina barbecue. He participated in local organizations, notably the Loblolly Society, The Thomas Cooper Society, and the Torch Club’s Columbia chapter.

Winberry was editor of the Southeastern Geographer (1988-1991) and earned theSoutheastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG)Outstanding Service Award for LifetimeAchievement in 2001.

John J. Winberry (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(6): 29.

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Robert G. Raskin

Robert G. Raskin died on March 2, 2012 at the age of 55.

Raskin was Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California from 1997 to 2006, and since 2006 had served as Supervisor of the Science Data Engineering and Archiving Group, Instrument Software and Science Data Systems, at JPL.

Raskin received a PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Michigan in 1992. He was the co-founder and first chair (2008-2009) and board director (2009-2011) of the AAG’s Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group (CISG). Raskin made significant contributions to broadening the connections between cyberinfrastructure (CI) and geography over the past 20 years. He was an expert in geoinformatics, which combines theoretical knowledge of Geographical Science with the technical innovation of Computer Science, and in the field of data interoperability in the Earth and environmental sciences. He was lead developer of the POET (https://poet.jpl.nasa.gov/) user interface for online data access from the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC), a tool used for many years by PO.DAAC and various ESIP/MEASURES efforts. Raskin had also served as Vice President, Chair of the Products and Services Committee, Chair of the Information Technology and Interoperability Committee, Chair of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, Chair of the GIS Cluster, and Organizer of the Interagency Forum on Data Preservation and Stewardship for the Earth Science Information Partner (ESIP) Federation.

Raskin was well known through the development of Semantic Web Terminologies for Earth and Environmental Science (SWEET), and his paper on knowledge representation in SWEET was acknowledged as the one of the top 10 most cited articles published between 2005 and 2010 by Computers & Geosciences (see https://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov/ontology/). Raskin organized and chaired over 20 sessions at AAG Annual Meetings covering a wide range of advanced CI topics, including geospatial semantics, virtual organization, spatial decision support systems and high performance computing. He co-edited special issues in two prestigious GIScience journals – International Journal of Geographic Information Science, and Computer, Environment and Urban Systems – capturing the state of research progress taking place in cyberinfrastructure and fostering significant discussion on future research.

In addition to his exceptional research achievements and tireless service, Raskin demonstrated a keen desire to inspire and guide young researchers to successful careers.

Robert G. Raskin (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(6): 28.

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Richard J. Houk

Richard J. Houk, aged 90, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Geography at DePaul University in Chicago, died on February 18, 2012.

Houk was the longest serving faculty member in the history of DePaul University. He joined DePaul in 1946 and continued teaching until 2010. He founded the Department of Geography in 1949, and established the DePaul Geographical Society as a student club in 1961. Houk served as a mentor and inspired countless students and faculty members.

In 1941, Houk received his B.A. in geography from Indiana University, and in 1950 earned a Ph.D. in geography from Northwestern University, writing his dissertation on “The Portuguese Maritime Fishing Industry.” A veteran of the Second World War, because of his ability to speak Spanish and Portuguese, he was selected for duty with the Weather Service at a secret air base in the Azores in 1944.

During his long career Dr. Houk received many awards, honors, and recognitions. In 1963 he was awarded the decoration of Caballero del Orden de Merito Civil by the Spanish Government in recognition of years of unique efforts to increase and improve good relations between the U.S. and Spain. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and in 1967 and in 1968 he lived in Portugal and studied its agricultural industry. A veteran traveler, over his lifetime he visited over one-hundred countries on six continents and led tour groups to many of these. His signature course was “The Iberian Impact: Spain and Portugal.” The photo at left shows Houk teaching at DePaul University during the 1967-68 academic year.

Richard J. Houk (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(5): 20.

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