Reds Wolman

M. Gordon “Reds” Wolman was a towering figure in 20th century fluvial geomorphology and an internationally-respected expert in river science, water resources management, and environmental education. He died on February 24, 2010, at the age of 85, in Baltimore.

Wolman was a member of the Johns Hopkins University faculty for more than 50 years, where he helped to establish the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. He received a bachelor’s degree in geology from Johns Hopkins in 1949. He later earned his doctorate at Harvard University, also in geology.

Wolman’s pioneering research fundamentally shaped our understanding of river forms and processes. In his PhD research at Harvard and subsequent work with Luna Leopold at the U.S. Geological Survey, Wolman played a central role in defining rivers in a modern, quantitative framework that still provides the standard against which new models and concepts are evaluated.

Wolman educated scores of students who continue to advance our scientific understanding of landscape morphology and hydrologic processes. He co-authored the classic Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology, a pioneering work in the study of landform development, with Luna Leopold and John Miller, a book that has been a standard in the field for 40 years and continues to be used widely.

Wolman’s career was defined by an extraordinary commitment to the application of research to river management and policy. Wolman demonstrated that relatively common floods do the most work in shaping river channels and, further, that there is remarkable consistency in the frequency of these “effective” floods. This result has guided interpretation of rivers and challenged river theory for the past 50 years, while also providing important input into modern channel restoration and design.

Wolman’s scholarly honors included election to both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Reds Wolman (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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Paul Dean Simkins

 

Paul Dean Simkins passed away on February 9, 2010 at the age of 82.

Simkins was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, on October 1, 1927. He graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a B.A. in 1951 and a Master of Arts in Geography in 1954. He completed his PhD in 1961 at the University of Wisconsin.

Simkins spent his professional career as professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University. His specialties included Latin America, migration, and population. Simkins was a member of the Pennsylvania Geographical Society and received a distinguished teaching award in 1990. He was a longtime volunteer with the American Association of University Women, as well as a driver for the State College Area Meals-on-Wheels. He was an avid wild flower enthusiast and photographer and was on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society. He received the outstanding teacher award from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in 1974.

Paul Dean Simkins (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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Robert W. Marx

Robert W. Marx, former Chief of the Geography Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, died following an illness. Marx served as the Geography Division’s Chief from 1983 to 2003, interrupted only by a three-year period as Associate Director in the 1990s to prepare for the 2000 Census. He was the architect of the Census Bureau’s TIGER System, which began in the early 1980s as a collaborative effort with the U.S. Geological Survey. Marx was known as a trailblazer who sought new ways to advance the importance of census geography through technological advances that were made practical through useful applications. By making spatial data for the nation available, the TIGER effort opened the way for GIS development and pioneered an entire new industry. Bob Marx began his GIS career in the early 1960s while a student in geography and urban planning at the University of Minnesota, studying under John Borchert. To cover his educational expenses, he worked in the offi ces of Hodne Associates, Architects and Planners, preparing land use and comprehensive plan maps for small communities in Minnesota and Illinois under the auspices of the former “Section 701” program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In this capacity, he used the precursor to modern automated GIS methods – mylar base maps and clear overlays emblazoned with Zipa- Tone shadings and Presstype letters – to create the various “views” that illustrated combinations of information integral to the planning process. After joining the Census Bureau in 1966, Marx helped launch the Bureau’s then fl edgling Metropolitan Map Series, which provided the base for the Address Coding Guides that covered the 145 largest urban centers of the United States for the 1970 decennial census. Although crude by today’s standards, these two systems – comprising the base map information of streets, street names, address ranges, rivers, lakes and their names, railroads, governmental unit boundaries and names, census tract boundaries and numbers – once entered into the Census Bureau’s computers and enhanced with the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) technologies, this series evolved into the Geographic Base Files (GBFs) covering the 287 largest urban centers of the 1980 census, and then to the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) files that covered the entire United States, Puerto Rico, and the associated Island Areas of the 1990 census and Census 2000. During his more than 36-year career at the Census Bureau, Marx received several awards for exceptional performance, including the Department of Commerce’s Gold and Silver Medals, and the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award. A memorial/tribute session in honor of Bob Marx is currently being organized at the AAG Annual Meeting for the evening of Wednesday, April 14. Consult your conference program for place and time.

Robert W. Marx (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(3): 14.

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Alan D. MacPherson

Alan MacPherson, Professor of Geography at the State University of New York at Buffalo, died recently at the age of 51. He had served as Chair of the Department of Geography from 2001-2007. He was also Director of SUNy-buffalo’s Canada-United States Trade Center (CUSTAC). MacPherson was born and raised in Inverness, Scotland. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography from the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom in 1979, and a master’s degree in planning from Edinburgh College of Art in 1981. In 1982, he earned a master’s degree in geography from the University of Toronto, where he also earned his doctorate in 1988. MacPherson’s principal research interests concerned the relationship between technological innovation and regional economic development, with special emphasis on export development and Canada-U.S. trade. His teaching included undergraduate and graduate courses in international business and economic geography. He became an Associate Professor at SUNy-buffalo in 1988.

Alan D. MacPherson (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(7): 19.

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Jasper Harris

Jasper Louis “Jack” Harris, Chair of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at North Carolina Central University, Durham, died in the fall of 2009.

Harris served on the faculty of North Carolina Central University in Durham for 34 years. He authored numerous articles and professional papers in scientific journals and also served on review panels for many federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation. He received his B.S. from North Carolina Central University, and earned an M.A. and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to the AAG, Harris was a member of the American Meteorological Society, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and the American Water Resources Association.

Jasper Harris (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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Charles Gildersleeve

Charles Gildersleeve, longtime professor of geography at the University of Nebraska- Omaha and one of the founders of the Geographic Educators of Nebraska, died recently at the age of 69. “Chuck” Gildersleeve was born in Iowa and earned a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He taught at the University of Nebraska-Omaha for 45 years, beginning his career there in 1964. He served as Chair of the department from 1981-1988. Gildersleeve’s first love was teaching and over the course of his career he estimated that he had taught urban, economic and educational geography to nearly 20,000 college students. Numerous teaching awards and other accolades were presented to him by the University of Nebraska-Omaha and other national professional groups. He was extremely popular with students, who regularly mentioned him in evaluations as a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Gildersleeve was also active in outreach to the community, giving hundreds of talks and workshops to classes and teachers in K-12 schools around Nebraska. He was a faculty coordinator of the Geographic Educators of Nebraska from 1987-2007. Gildersleeve also was responsible for running the Nebraska Geographic Bee from 1988-2007 under the aegis of the National Geographic Society, in which tens of thousands of students learned to hone their geography skills and compete for trips to Washington D.C. He was active in working with various community groups and served on statewide and local education committees.

Charles Gildersleeve (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(3): 14.

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George R. Rumney

George Richard Rumney, Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut, died recently at the age of 94. His 1968 college textbook, Climatology and the World’s Climates, laid the foundations for the burgeoning study of climate and climate change. Rumney earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1940. After graduation, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Rumney subsequently joined the U.S. Navy, where as a lieutenant he commanded a submarine chaser in the Pacific during World War II. He would later attribute his fascination with atmospheric phenomena to his years at sea. Following the war, Rumney joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for his knowledge of geography and mapping skills before returning to the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in 1947. In 1948, Rumney joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut, where he persuaded his colleagues and the administration that the broad study of geography merited its own separate department. Rumney taught the University of Connecticut’s first course in oceanography and lobbied both the administration and the Connecticut State Legislature to support marine sciences. His efforts culminated in the University’s establishment of The Marine Science Institute (MSI) at UCONN’s Avery Point campus. After his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1983, Rumney continued to travel, delving into the maritime culture and history of Portugal as well as making trips to Costa Rica’s cloud forests and the Australian outback. He maintained an office at the Marine Science Institute, where he attended seminars and followed the progress of an increasingly international group of graduate students while continuing to write for various professional journals. As a naturalist, avid walker, gardener, and bird-watcher, Rumney headed the Groton Long Point Conservation Commission for several years following his retirement.

George R. Rumney (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(7): 19.

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Glen Elder

Glen Elder, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Vermont, died recently at the age of 42 after collapsing while jogging near his Burlington home. A political geographer, he was known for his rigorous, critical, and innovative work on queer space, heteronormativity, masculinities, race, bodies, and borders in the post-9/11 context. Elder earned undergraduate degrees in both Geography and English at the University of Witwatersrand in his home country of South Africa. He completed his MA (1992) and PhD (1995) at Clark University. Elder was appointed as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont in 1995, Assistant Professor in 1998, and achieved tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2002. He was in the process of preparing his dossier for promotion to full Professor at the time of his death. Elder had served on an interim basis as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since 2008 and had been scheduled to begin that role on a permanent basis on July 1. He was also past chair of the Department of Geography at UVM (2005-08). A well-known and respected teacher at the University of Vermont, Elder received a kroepsch Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004 and the Dean’s Lecture Award for outstanding Teaching and Scholarship in 2005. known for his commitment to confronting issues of marginalization and uneven power relations in the geography of sex, race, and place, he taught classes in African regional geography, political geography, feminist geography, and sexuality and space. Elder’s publications include Hostels, Sexuality and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies (ohio University Press, 2003) and more than a dozen other articles and book chapters.

Glen Elder (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(8) 20.

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Jack Reilly

Jack Reilly, former Executive Producer of ABC Television’s Good Morning America, died recently at the age of 84. Reilly assumed his position as Executive Producer of GMA in 1986, when that program was running a distant second in the audience ratings to NBC’s Today Show, and began restructuring GMA to enhance its coverage and elucidation of major news stories. To this end, he appointed “editors” in science, medicine, law, consumer affairs, media products, and other fields, and took the GMA team, led by Charles Gibson, Joan Lunden, and meteorologist Spencer Christian to locales where news was being made, from Scotland’s autonomy drive to Hong kong’s takeover by China. In 1988, Reilly became persuaded that America’s geographic illiteracy constituted a threat to the nation’s welfare and appointed a geography editor to the GMA staff. over the next seven years, geographic issues formed the topics of more than 200 GMA segments. The maps and charts supporting these segments attracted commentary from other networks as well as print media including TV Guide and People Magazine, and elicited letters from several thousand viewers including high-school and college students. In 1990, the AAG presented Reilly with a special award during its Annual Meeting in Toronto, in recognition of his advocacy of geography. Under Reilly’s leadership, Good Morning America became an Emmy Award winning program in 1993. Ownership and management changes at Capital Cities Broadcasting led to Reilly’s departure in 1994. He joined NBC as a highly esteemed producer and consultant at CNBC. When the new management decided on a different format at GMA, most of the staff, including the medical, legal, consumer affairs, and geography editors (as well as all three hosts) left the show. After the geography editor’s contract ended in 1996, Reilly persuaded NBC management to create the position of geography analyst, initially at MSNBC and in an advisory role at NBC News, which sustained his geography network-television initiative for another two years. Through his vision and matchless corporate diplomacy, Reilly brought geography to the general public’s attention in an unprecedented, and subsequently unmatched, way.

Jack Reilly (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(8):21.

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Thomas Leinbach

Thomas R. Leinbach, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky, died on December 8, 2009, at the age of 68. Leinback was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on November 28, 1941. He received an undergraduate degree in transport economics from Pennsylvania State University, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi. He remained at Penn State, where he later earned both a master’s degree and PhD in geography. Leinbach spent six years teaching at the University of Vermont in Burlington before moving to the University of Kentucky in 1977, where he spent the majority of his professional career. His work focused on transportation and economic geography, global production networks, e-commerce, and rural development in Southeast Asia. As a scholar, Leinbach traveled to and did work on a wide variety of countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Italy, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Leinbach served as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. From 1990 until his death, Leinbach was the editor of the journal, Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy. During his career he received more than 25 grants and awards to fund and support his research. Through the course of his career he received research awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Ford Foundation, and Fulbright-Hays. In 1996, Leinbach was recognized as a Centennial Fellow at his alma mater for his career accomplishments. In 2001, Leinbach was awarded the honor of Advanced Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. In 2002, the UK Board of Trustees named him a University Research Professor, and he was honored with the UK College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Award in 2006.

Thomas R. Leinbach (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(3): 14.

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