Leonard Kouba

Geographer Leonard Kouba died on July 15, 2020. A longtime professor at Northern Illinois University until 1993, he was 82.

Kouba, who specialized in African geography, was an avid traveler, fisherman, and big-game hunter. He visited approximately 120 countries in his lifetime. He was a past recipient of NIU’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. He established the Leonard J. Kouba Geography Graduate Student Fund to provide scholarships and other resources for graduate students in his home department at NIU.

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Brian Robson

Brian Robson–a geographer who helped to develop the British Index of Multiple Deprivatio and changed the way British governments dealt with socio-economic decline in towns, cities and regions–died on July 2, 2020 at the age of 81.

Robson’s research and design of the index provided an integrated, extensive and fine-grained understanding of poverty and financial mechanisms for relieving it in Great Britain, crafted around an area-based regeneration approach that Brian focused on the needs of towns and small cities, not only large urban areas. In the words of colleague Noel Castree, writing in The Guardian, Robson’s approach also “promoted a multi-agency approach, supporting integrated regeneration that was more attuned to local circumstances.”

Robson was born in Rothbury in Northumberland and attended Cambridge University, graduating in 1961. He completed a full-time PhD in urban social geography at Cambridge in 1964. In 1969 he published Urban Analysis, followed by Urban Social Areas in 1975. These two books led to his work on government policy.

Robson was a lecturer in geography at Aberystwyth University, leaving in 1967 to become a Harkness Fellow at the University of Chicago, working with planner Jack Meltzer at the interdisciplinary Center for Urban Studies. He returned to Cambridge in 1968 as a lecturer in human geography, staying for a decade until taking a post at Manchester University in 1977, where he established the Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS) in 1983. His 1988 book Those Inner Cities identified the failings of British urban policy and shaped the design of the Single Regeneration Budget.

Robson’s career was built on a strong commitment to equality of opportunity. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Founders medal in 2000; he was honored with the Order of British Empire in 2010. He is survived by his wife, Glenna Ransom (nee Conway), and Glenna’s two sons from a previous marriage, Mark and Peter.

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Dwight Brown

Dwight Brown, retired professor of geography and former geography department chair at the University of Minnesota, died on June 19, 2020 of natural causes. He was 83.

Brown’s expertise during his career of more than fifty years spanned geographic information and analysis, physical geography, and cartography, with specific interest and expertise in biogeography, environmental systems, grasslands, global change, resource use, and landscape evolution. He initiated the first GIS course at UM.

For most of his career, Brown focused on the biogeography of the Midcontinent Plains. He was also a farmer, as well as director of the Water Resources Research Center at UM, and an associate fellow of the Center for Great Plains Study at the University of Nebraska.. His publications and accomplishments include the 1996 AAG publication, Living in the Biosphere: Production, Pattern, Population and Diversity; the 2003 publication and CD Biogeography of the Global Garden; and Embedded Scales in Biogeography (Blackwell Press, 2004).

As reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Brown was an engaging and imaginative instructor, who encouraged questions from his students and never stopped learning, himself. “He loved learning and had a sense of curiosity and it was the driving factor in his career,” said his daughter Cindy Brown Polson.

“He always questioned and probed for deeper understanding,” recalled his colleague Richard Skaggs. “Dwight believed strongly in the value and importance of education and inspired the same qualities in his children and his many students.”

Brown was born to Dallas and Verna Brown on Aug. 15, 1936, in Aledo, Ill. He grew up in Galva, Ill. He earned his bachelor’s degree in geography from Western Illinois University and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in geography from the University of Kansas. In addition to his daughter Cindy, Brown is survived by daughter Lori Casey, son Kyle, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife of 61 years, Helen Brown, who died in 2018.

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Frank A. Friedman

Frank A. Friedman, a member of AAG since 1959, died at his home in Robesonia, Pennsylvania, on May 30, 2020. He was 81.

Friedman was a graduate of Liberty High School, in his hometown of Bethlehem, and earned his Bachelor of Science in Education from Kutztown State College in 1960. He earned a Master of Education in Geography from Penn State University in 1965, and a Master of Science from Drexel University in 1980. He was a longtime geography teacher in the Conrad Weiser School District in Pennsylvania. He is survived by his sister, Marie A. Friedman.

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Ronald Johnston

Ron Johnston, a human geographer who helped shape the discipline and was a winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award from AAG, died on May 29, 2020 at the age of 79. A prolific author and co-author of more than 1,000 publications, including 50 books and 800 articles, he specialized in quantitative and political geography, but also ranged widely in urban and social issues, electoral geographies, and the history of geography.

During his career, Johnston was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to scholarship in 2011, He also received the Murchison Award and Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, and the Prix Vautrin Lud at the International Geography Festival 1999.

Born in 1941, Johnston grew up in Swindon. He attributed his love of geography to studying maps during childhood. Educated at Commonweal School, Swindon, in 1959 he went to study Geography at the University of Manchester, and earned a PhD from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He returned to Great Britain in 1974, where he served as a chair and eventually Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Sheffield for 18 years, He subsequently moved to Essex as Vice Chancellor, then joined Bristol’s School of Geographical Sciences in 1995.

Of Johnston’s many books, two– the Dictionary of Human Geography and Geography and Geographers – stand out for scores of undergraduate geographers: the latter (jointly authored) is in its seventh edition. Ron’s work on the British electoral system was interdisciplinary long before such research became popular.He advised all three main political parties, civil servants, House of Commons’ Select Committees and the Boundary Commission.

Johnston is survived by his wife Rita, two children, Christopher and Lucy, and by his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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David Hornbeck

On Earth Day, 2020, COVID-19 claimed the life of Dr. David Hornbeck, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, California State University, Northridge. David led a full and productive life, ranging from two hitches in the Air Force from 1958 to 1966, earning his B.A. and M.A. in geography at what is now called California State University, Fresno (1968 and 1969, respectively) and his Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 1972. In 1972, he began his career in the Department of Geography at San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge. He retired in 2009.

Dominating the majority of his work, David’s passion was historical geography, especially of California during the mission and rancho periods and during the early establishment of the American agricultural and urban landscapes on the underlying Native Californian, Spanish, and Mexican cultural landscapes. He had a particular interest in the impacts of Spanish colonial expansion on the Native Californians and their fate in the mission system, meticulously reconstructing their demographics through mission archives in California and Mexico. He worked out the details of the economics of the mission, pueblo, and presidio systems in the context of the global trade and politics of the day. He was fascinated by the privatization of lands in California by the newly independent Mexico, which eventually led to the expropriation of the mission holdings to support that purpose. Privatization required petitioners for a land grant to map their proposed properties, submitting diseños as part of the petition. These petitions and diseños became part of the process by which Mexican ranchero families defended their claims to the American Board of Land Commissioners after 1848 (79% of them successfully, though the legal expenses typically led to sale or subdivision of the adjudicated holdings). David was interested also in the development of the distinctive California agricultural system and how the California urban system still bears the marks of the preceding Spanish and Mexican settlement systems. David loved the intense archival work historical geography required and, indeed, built up quite a collection of original materials that now comprise the Hornbeck Collection at the Monterey County Historical Society.

A second compelling interest David pursued was business GIS. His earliest work in this area was in grant and contract work in business location analysis and market area analysis, first for restaurants and then for banks. By 1984, he had begun to build and license fieldwork-based GIS systems for banks’ branch analysis, market area analysis, network analysis, and merger and acquisition needs. The LandBank GIS became so popular with major banks across the country that David and his wife, Ginny, founded Area Location Systems, Inc., to develop, market, and service it and train bank staff in its use. As a result of this work, banks became among the first corporations truly to understand what it was geographers do and to seek out geographers for their own marketing and IT staffs! David and Ginny eventually sold their shares in the company by the late-1990s, Ginny moving into special education and David continuing to do consulting and workshops for the banking industry, law firms, and water agencies until he entered the Faculty Early Retirement Program in 2002.

As a university faculty member, David devoted a lot of his time and energy to his students, many of whom remembered him fondly as a vivid and caring character and remained in contact with him long after their graduations. Indeed, the root of his interest in applied economic geography and business GIS was originally his desire to help his students develop rewarding careers using their geographic education. He served as the career advisor in his department and organized sixteen annual jobs symposia for geography students. Some of his publications were explicitly devoted to geographic education and to how faculty could cultivate both applied and academic dimensions in their work to mentor their students. Many of the “Hornbeck School of Thought” (or “Hornbeck University of Geography”) went on for Ph.D.s themselves or entered highly successful careers in banking, environmental consulting, information technology companies, education, or government. Typical of David was an insight he shared shortly before retiring. He noted that academics often deeply enjoy teaching and mentoring the “A list” students who will go on to graduate school but sometimes tend to overlook the C students in the middle of the class curve. Many of these kids are much brighter than their GPAs suggest but are either too overworked, engulfed in personal problems, or immature to do well while they are students. But they are still taking it all in and, then, he said, they “grow into their educations” a few years later. Their geographic education all comes together for them in the context of their careers, which then take off. He commented that it’s the “C” students who seem to go on into six figure salaries and highly placed jobs, not the “A” students who go on to graduate school and academic penury!

David’s tragic encounter with COVID-19 leaves behind a large cadre of students, colleagues, business associates, and friends who mourn his loss and wish to comfort his wife of forty years, Ginny; his siblings, Arlene Suart (Sutter Creek, CA) and Claro Cabading (Honolulu); his sons, David, Christopher, and Brian; his grandchildren, Ashton, Vincent, and Robin. A webpage commemorating his life has been set up where there are links to his curriculum vitae, the Hornbeck Collection, his retirement “roast” materials, and examples from David’s little known pastime, flower photography. A full obituary will also be posted there.

Donations will be gratefully received to support the Monterey County Historical Society that physically houses his collection (https://mchsmuseum.com/salinas/). Many thanks to Mr. Patrick J. “Mike” Maloney and Ms. Miriam Infinger, Research Associate, of the Law Offices of Patrick J. Maloney (Alameda, CA); Mr. James Perry of the MCHS; and Dr. Rubén G. Mendoza, Chair of the Department of Social, Behavioral, and Global Studies, and Ms. Jennifer A. Lucico, M.A., Lecturer, Department of Social, Behavioral, and Global Studies, California State University, Monterey Bay, for their years of work getting this collection assessed and physically moved to the Museum, for creating its digital portal, and for getting it all catalogued on WorldCat.

Very sadly yours,

Chrys Rodrigue
Dave’s second graduate student and friend of 48 years

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James R. McDonald

James R McDonald, Professor in the Geography Department of Eastern Michigan University from 1965 to 2000, passed away on April 20, 2020.

Jim was born in San Francisco on the 28th of January 1934 and graduated from Katonah High School, New York in 1951. Jim graduated from Antioch College in 1955 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and received a Master’s Degree in Geography from the University of Illinois the following year. He then enlisted in the Army for three years and was assigned to the Counter-Intelligence Corps where he learned French in the Army Language School in Monterey before being assigned to La Rochelle, France, where he spent almost two years. Upon his return to civilian life, he returned to Illinois and completed his doctoral research on the French region of Brittany in 1964. Prior to accepting the position at EMU, Jim was an Assistant Professor at UCLA for two years.

Jim was the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral, an NSF Fellowship and other awards and grants including National Geographic Society Research Grants; Michigan Department of Natural Resources Grants; and Social Science Research Council Grants. Jim was a proud member of the AAG for over 50 years.

Jim specialized in the cultural, political, and economic geography of Western Europe, especially France; the geography of rural-to-urban and labor migrations; geographical aspects of environmental assessment and preservation; geography of travel and tourism; and the history of geographic ideas. Jim authored two books, numerous professional papers and book reviews.

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Ezekiel Kalipeni

The AAG community is mourning the loss of Dr. Ezekiel Kalipeni, a longtime geography professor who died in the early hours of April 11, 2020 from heart-related complications while he was in his native country, Malawi at age 66. Dr. Kalipeni globally renowned for his work around medical geography, population and environment, and international development focusing on Africa retired from an illustrious academic career in the Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) in June 2019. Dr. Kalipeni was a prolific scholar of human geographer, a great teacher and mentor, a philanthropist, a world traveler, a devoted husband, and loving father.

Dr. Kalipeni earned his Bachelor of Social Science degree (with distinction) at the University of Malawi (1979), and masters (1982) and Ph.D. (1986) degrees in geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although he admitted that his original career plans lay elsewhere, and that he came to geography “by chance,” he was an outstanding scholar and gifted teacher, highly respected by his colleagues and committed to his students. His distinguished academic and public intellectual career spanned nearly four decades having worked at the University of Malawi (1986-88), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1988-91), Colgate University (New York, 1991-94), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1994-2019). During his career, he published 16 books and over 170 peer reviewed articles, book and encyclopedia chapters. Dr. Kalipeni’s work is widely acknowledged in citations from these and other published works, at many conferences, symposia and workshops, as well as in policy circles in Africa and other developing countries.

He earned international reputation for his seminal work on spatial analysis and mapping of the HIV/AIDs epidemic in Africa and in advancing understanding of the complex underlying drivers. Dr. Kalipeni devoted many years to field research in southern Africa to examine the demographic, economic, cultural, political, economic, socio-institutional and geographic factors that shape the spatial and temporal spread of HIV and other health challenges. His work on issues of health disparities, population and natural resources management, and development in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on southern Africa is also widely recognized. In 2014, the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Africa Specialty Group honored Dr. Kalipeni with the Kwado-Konadu-Agyemang Distinguished Scholar in African Geography Award.

During his career, Dr. Kalipeni provided significant leadership and service to the scholarly and scientific community. He served as interim Director of the Center of African Studies 2001-2002 at the University of Illinois. and as Program Director of the National Science Foundation’s Spatial Sciences Program (2009-2011). Some scholars have remarked how helpful he was as a Program Director at NSF, going well beyond the call of duty. He is also credited as the sole editor of the African Geographical Review for several years at a critical transitional time in the journal’s development. It is now a thriving journal published by Taylor & Francis in association with the Africa Specialty Group of the AAG (one of three journals published by the AAG). This journal has become a critical outlet for geographic scholarship on Africa for geographers and scholars from related disciplines in the USA, Africa and other parts of the world. Within the AAG he chaired the West Lakes Division and the Africa Specialty Group, was on the Board for the Medical Geography Group and was an active member in the Population Specialty Group. He was also the consummate collaborator, team player and leader, and collaborated with so many colleagues with geography and related fields within and outside the USA.

Fondly known as “Dr. Zeke” among his students and close colleagues, he stood out for his selfless and untiring support and mentoring for students and upcoming scholars, particularly those of African extraction. Many of the students he has trained over the past four decades have built successful careers in academia, the public and private sector in the US, Malawi and other parts of Africa. Former students and junior scholars within the AAG Africa Specialty Group—including ones from other disciplines—attest not only to his mentorship but also active support through research collaborations and co-publishing with many. Many upcoming scholars have credited him for some of their career success. Dr Zeke never forgot his first alma mater, where he also launched his academic career. Dr. Kalipeni cultivated and sustained strong research and mentoring relationships with the university, and after retiring, he donated and shipped his 1,700-volume personal library to the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Malawi.

As a teacher, Dr. Kalipeni took joy in teaching large classes of undergraduate students, including Global Development & Environment, and Cities of the World, and others including population geography and Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. He made his courses exciting and students liked his sense of humor, preparedness, and for inculcating critical thinking among students. He inspired graduate students and published with most of them, building a bridge for their future careers. He was particularly helpful to international students, helping them to navigate the US education system, and going beyond to providing temporary housing at his house if they were stranded.

Despite his prolific academic career, Dr. Kalipeni maintained some balance with family life. His wife, Fatima, and grown children Josephine, Jackie, Juliana, Jacob, Joshua, Natalia and Melissa, remember him as a loving and proud husband and father, a jovial storyteller with a ‘wicked’ sense of humor, a generous giver, and a motivator who taught them the value of hard work. Together with his family, he established the Kalipeni Foundation to support local development projects in Malawi’s southern district of Mulanje, including on education, safe water supply, environmental management and livelihood support. His family will carry on his legacy through this foundation and in living the many lessons he taught them.

He will be missed dearly by colleagues, family, and friends but his legacy and works will live on.

Fare you well, Dr. Zeke

May his soul rest in eternal peace.

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Robert A. Muller

Robert A. Muller, a 2003 AAG honoree for Lifetime Achievement in climatology, died on March 12, 2020 in Baton Rouge. He was 91 years old. A graduate of Lyndhurst High School in 1945, Bob worked as a printer adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge in Lower Manhattan for seven years, and served in the US Army in Germany during the Korean War. He graduated in geography from Rutgers University in 1958, earning an MS and PhD in physical geography and climatology at Syracuse University in 1962.

During his career, Muller served with the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California at Berkeley in a joint position, as well as and served as an associate professor at Rutgers University. He joined the Department of Geography and Anthropology faculty as a climatologist at Louisiana State University in 1969. He reestablished the position of State Climatologist and initiated the Office of State Climatology. With federal funding he founded the Southern Regional Climate Center, which he directed for six years before retirement. Muller’s research applied water-budget climatology models to floods and droughts, for the pioneering development of synoptic climatology in Louisiana. With his colleague Barry Keim, he studied the geography and history of tropical storm and hurricane strikes along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to the Yucatan.

Muller is survived by his wife, Beate “Sonni” Eckenbach-Fiedel Muller; a daughter and son-in-law, Lisa and Justin Bourgeois and two grandchildren, Ashton Leigh and Myles Patrick; a son John Henry Muller; and a brother, Jim Muller. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Jeanne Underhill Muller, and his parents, Albert and Helen Muller, and a sister, Jean Marshall.

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David Schwarz

David Schwarz (1936-2019) was a professor of geography at San Jose State University. He passed away in Gilroy, CA, aged 82, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.

He was born in Mattoon, Illinois, the 2^nd of 7 children raised in a two-bedroom home with a coal stove for heat, and no indoor plumbing. After graduating from Mattoon H.S. he had a series of part-time jobs. The one that became the most significant was as a disk-jockey at a local radio station playing country and western music. To his friends, he seemed to know every country and western song ever recorded (both lyrics and melody). A random word or phrase in conversation would sometimes launch him into a song.

He continued with part-time jobs while attending Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, a few miles east of Mattoon. He graduated in 1963 with a double major, art and geography. One part-time job using his art skills, was to paint colorful signs in grocery store windows advertising weekly sales. It was during this era that he served six years in the National Guard.

David then attended Southern Illinois University (1963-1965), but left to pursue a Ph.D. degree at the University of Kansas under David Simonett, a world-renowned scholar in the field of remote sensing. Dr. Schwarz completed his Ph.D. in 1975, with a dissertation titled “Variability of the Accuracy of Delineating Agricultural Field Boundaries from Satellite Images of the United States.” He accepted a position in geography at San Jose State University in 1971, and rose through the ranks to become a full professor. David’s publications were in the general area of remote sensing, and he taught many courses on this subject. He spent his entire career at SJSU, and was an excellent teacher, attracting many students to his regional classes. He had small classes of dedicated students when teaching technical courses (as remote sensing, digital image processing, geographic information systems, cartography, and the like).

SJSU was in financial difficulty in the early 1980s, and social science layoffs were threatened. David helped alleviate this situation by accepting a position as a Visiting Professor at the Air Force Academy for two years (1980-82). He later taught courses on statistics in the College of Business in order to strengthen their doctoral program (in areas for which he was not trained, business or statistics, but he did an excellent job). Throughout his career David served on university committees and gained much knowledge of the university and how it operated. He was a very likeable and competent person, known for his integrity, and thoughtful and reserved demeanor. One of his colleagues called him “the Gary Cooper of the university.” Through committee work he developed many friendships with fellow professors in different disciplines. This deep background was a great help when he accepted administrative positions at SJSU.

Dave began his administrative work as Chair of Geography and Environmental Studies (1991-1995). He had the difficult and challenging task attempting to unite the two disciplines. David later began a five-year term (1996-2001) as Associate Dean in the College of Social Studies. These were the happiest years in his career, as he received wonderful support from the college staff, and from friends and staff in various departmental offices. David retired from SJSU in 2001, but continued to teach a course most semesters until the sudden departure of a dean. He once again helped SJSU, as he served as a dean for another year, and retired for the last time in 2005.

He is survived by his wife Deborah Walker Schwarz, two children, Sarah Nilsson and Noah Schwarz, and two grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents, Raymond Noah and Gladys Elizabeth Schwarz, and two brothers James and Joseph Schwarz.

By Malcolm Comeaux and Deborah Schwarz

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