David Stoddart

David Stoddart, geographer and one of the world’s leading coral-reef scientists, passed away on November 23, 2014, aged 77, following a long period of declining health.

David Ross Stoddart was born in 1937 in Stockton-on-Tees in the northeast of England. He developed an interest in geography at school. Inspired by the successful ascent of Everest in 1953, he immersed himself in books about the Himalaya and spent two years compiling an atlas of Tibet which included maps showing travel times in yak-days from Lhasa. He also borrowed a copy of William Morris Davis’ The Coral Reef Problem from his local library and was captivated by the illustrations of humid tropical landscapes.

He was the first boy from his school to win a scholarship to Cambridge and went up to St John’s College in 1956 with a determination to be a tropical geographer. For a boy ‘from the provinces’, Cambridge was a whole new world, personally and intellectually, and he threw himself in to his studies. His student vacations were spent on expeditions – to India overland by rail, to Sierra Leone by ship, and to the jungles of Colombia and the headwaters of the Orinoco.

After graduating with a first class degree in 1959 Stoddart had the opportunity to join another Cambridge Expedition, this time to British Honduras (Belize). His task of mapping offshore reefs and islands and interpreting their geomorphology was the beginning of a life-long career charting and documenting the world’s major reef systems in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Ocean.

He returned to British Honduras in 1961 for further research into corals and the plants of the cays, working for Louisiana State University before and after a major hurricane, tracking its effects on atolls and reefs. While there, he received a postcard from his mentor at Cambridge, the esteemed coastal geomorphologist Professor Alfred Steers, which read: “My dear David: would you like a job in Cambridge?” David took up the offer and was awarded a PhD from Cambridge in 1964 for his work in British Honduras.

Stoddart was a Demonstrator (1962-1967) and University Lecturer (1967-1988) in the Department of Geography, as well as a Fellow of Churchill College (1966-1987). His research continued on the geomorphology and ecology of tropical islands and reefs, with a particular focus on documenting the plant assemblages present on atolls, making links to evolutionary biology. Several plant species were named for him. He also studied the evolution of atolls since the Pleistocene.

Stoddart’s record of fieldwork was nothing short of astonishing. After Belize, he conducted research in the Maldives, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, at various locations in the Pacific including the Great Barrier Reef, Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, and the disputed Phoenix Islands. Each island study was marked by a detailed field survey of reef topography and biogeography, laying down a Domesday-like benchmark from which future environmental change could be gauged.

Stoddart made his reputation with a campaign to save Aldabra, a large uninhabited raised atoll in the Seychelles. It started during a trip to Addo Atoll in the southern Maldives when he stayed at a military station on the island of Gau. Here, a British RAF officer told him about the studies underway in London to assess the suitability of a number of western Indian Ocean islands for use as military airfields. Having seen from Gau the impact of military development on vulnerable island ecosystems, he approached the Royal Society to suggest an independent assessment of the ecological importance of these islands.

Members of the Royal Society pressured politicians who agreed to attach Stoddart to a Ministry of Defence planning group on Aldabra in 1966, and to a joint US Department of Defence and Royal Naval detachment to Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands, in 1967. On Aldabra he recorded the many endemic plants and animals, mapped the vast colonies of nesting seabirds, and surveyed the habitats of giant tortoises. He concluded that Aldabra was one of the world’s most ecologically important atolls and must not be developed by the military. After lobbying and campaigning in parliament, the government caved in and Aldabra was saved. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, protected as a habitat for unique plants, birds and more than 100,000 giant tortoises. He was last on Aldabra in 2007 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its designation.

Stoddart was astonishingly productive, writing hundreds of scientific papers on coral atolls, islands and reefs, mangrove swamps and salt marshes. Season after season of field work was meticulously recorded in issues of the Atoll Research Bulletin, a publication of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He was also the first coordinating editor of the international journal Coral Reefs. He was dedicated to scientific collaboration and support across borders which led him to co-found the International Society for Reef Studies in 1980, serving as its first president, and establish the quadrennial International Coral Reef Symposium.

Stoddart also had an interest in the history of geographic thought, publishing a major book On Geography and Its History in 1986 and writing papers on the influence of Darwin on geographical work. He was also a great advocate for physical geography in the broadest sense and was one of the founders of the journal Progress in Geography.

He grew increasingly restless at Cambridge University in the 1980s. His eccentric lifestyle, long absences in the field, and relaxed attitude to paperwork did not endear him to the university bureaucracy. He also struggled to raise funding for his field research. So when he was offered a position of Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley in 1988 he accepted with alacrity. He served on the faculty until retiring as Emeritus Professor in 2000.

Colleagues note that he was quite a striking figure on campus, with his red hair and red beard contrasting with his “full whites” (white shorts, shirt, socks and plimsolls), worn even in winter. At UC Berkeley his research continued and it went hand-in-hand with his commitment to conservation. He played a central role in the founding of the International Year of the Reef in 1997, and the establishment of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. Later years saw a change to studying the role of fringing mangrove forests on island sedimentation.

Sadly, years of exposure to tropical sunshine on his beloved coral reefs eventually took their toll on Stoddart’s health in the form of skin cancer which began in his early 50s. But he obstinately continued his fieldwork on reefs.

Among the professional recognition for his work was the Ness Award (1965) and the Founder’s Gold Medal (1979) from the Royal Geographical Society, the Prix Manley-Bendall from the Institut Oceanographique de Monaco and the Sociéte Oceanographique de Paris (1972), the Livingstone Gold Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1981), the Herbert E. Gregory Medal from the Pacific Science Association (1986), the Darwin Medal from the International Society for Reef Studies (first recipient in 1988), and the George Davidson Medal from the American Geographical Society (2001). He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1979 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2000. However, no plaudit gave him greater pleasure than the establishment of a David Stoddart Scholarship by the University of the Seychelles to mark his work on Aldabra.

David was an outstanding advocate for geography within the natural sciences. His wide knowledge of the world’s reefs, plus his broad geographical approach, gave him a unique role in bringing specialists within the natural sciences together. He was at his best as a leader of multidisciplinary and internationally complex international expeditions, but he was also a fine lecturer and inspiring research supervisor, committed to nurturing talent and setting high standards in postgraduate research.

He is survived by his wife, June, son Michael, daughter Aldabra (named after the atoll), and a granddaughter.

Read a comprehensive and entertaining account of David’s life and adventures in his own words

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Jay Harman

Long-time geography faculty member at Michigan State University, Jay Harman, passed away suddenly on November, 18, 2014, aged 73, after suffering from a stroke and associated complications

Jay Reginald Harman was born in Hammond, IN, in 1941. He graduated from Illinois State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1963 and a Master of Science degree in 1964 then moved to the University of Illinois for a Doctorate (1968). Following this, he spent his entire career on the faculty of the Department of Geography at Michigan State University.

In the early phases of his career Harman’s research and teaching interests were in physical geography, particularly plant geography (mostly of the eastern United States) and synoptic climatology, and often in some combination.

His research was published widely in journals, particularly in the Annals of the AAG. He was also a co-author of The Climatic Atlas of Michigan (1990) and sole author of Synoptic Climatology of the Westerlies: Process and Patterns (1991).

Harman was strongly committed to field instruction and organized fieldtrips to a wide variety of environments in the eastern United States including Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Ozark-Ouachita Upland in Missouri and Arkansas, the Coastal Plain in northern Florida, and the southern Appalachian Mountains. His favorite was the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina/ Tennessee), a trip repeated many times over the years from which hundreds of students benefitted. Everyone who went on that trip was touched by the grandeur of the place and Harman’s deep affection for it.

During the latter portion of his career, Harman became increasingly interested in philosophical matters, especially epistemology and ethics/morals, particularly as they interfaced with his specialization in the physical environment. He began writing about environmental ethics in scholarly journals and developed a new class on the topic in the 1990s which was taught frequently thereafter to very extremely good reviews.

Harman also wrote about the state of geography and his concerns for the long-term health of the discipline, exemplified by his papers entitled “Whither Geography?” published in The Professional Geographer in 2003 and 2005.

Harman became Professor Emeritus in 2009 and reduced some of his academic activities but continued to research, write, teach and run fieldtrips.

His last book was Collateral Damage: The Imperiled Status of Truth in American Public Discourse and Why It Matters to You published earlier in 2014. It is a culmination of his work and thought about untruthfulness in American popular political discourse – transmitted by politicians and the media – and reflects on how the public may separate truth from spin.

Jay is survived by his loving wife, Theresa Amelotte-Harman, and daughters Sara Renee and Rachel Anne. He will be long remembered by his students, colleagues and friends as a very thoughtful fellow who loved a good conversation on any subject from politics and bee keeping to alternative energy and the weather forecast.

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Roy Wolfe

One of the pioneers in the field of tourism geography, Roy Wolfe, passed away on November 15, 2014, a few days before his 97^th birthday.

Roy I. Wolfe, known as “Izzy” to his family, was born Israel Wolbromski in Poland in 1917. In 1922 the family moved to Canada where he acquired his English name. He grew up in the Kensington Market area of Toronto, where he also spent his latter years.

The Great Depression interrupted his education but he received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from McMaster University in 1940. During the Second World War he served in the Medical Corps of the Canadian Army. Then between 1945 and 1947 he headed the Visual Education Service of the Veterans’ Rehabilitation Institute within Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (now University). During this time he studied for a master’s degree in Biology at the University of Toronto including a dissertation on the variation of finger prints across different Canadian ethnic populations.

In the next phase of his life, Wolfe recognized geography as the discipline most closely aligned with his own interests. He took a position at the Department of Highways of Ontario (DHO) in 1952 where he rose through ranks as Statistician, Planner, Geographic Advisor, and Research Geographer. During this time he studied for a PhD in Geography at the University of Toronto. Initially the doctoral committee refused to approve his proposed research on summer cottages because tourism and recreation were not seen as appropriate subjects for serious scholarly research at the time. The committee relented after a year and he undertook a study of the location, ownership, and use of summer cottages in the province of Ontario, as well as their owners’ travel patterns. The doctorate was awarded in 1956.

At the DHO Wolfe made a significant contribution to economic planning and transportation policy. He was also an early adopter of mainframe computers to facilitate statistical analysis. After he was recruited into the faculty of the Geography Department at York University in 1967, he remained active as a planning consultant, participating in nearly two dozen tourism-related projects for governments in Canada, the United States and the UK.

At York University he taught courses in the regional geography of Canada, transportation geography, and recreation geography. His research continued in tourism geography, focused on the interactions between urban centers and nearby recreation areas. His numerous scholarly publications were instrumental in the creation of the new sub-field of recreation geography; he also made significant contributions to the literature on transportation and planning.

Wolfe had been profoundly deaf since 1947 but this did not hinder his love of teaching and interacting with students. He could lip read in English, as well as Yiddish, French and German. He also enlisted the aid of others to take notes for him during conversations, lectures, and presentations. This role was frequently performed by his devoted wife, Rosemary, as well as by students or colleagues.

The profound hearing loss made him value clear and elegant writing as a way to communicate effectively. He devoted long hours to editing and marking students’ essays, trying to improve their writing skills, frequently covering the page with red ink. One former student recalled that he “made the pages bleed!” He eventually compiled a seven-page guide for students called “Hints, Admonitions, and Downright Threats from a Jaded Reader of Too Many Sloppy Essays.”

Despite his high standards and formidable nature, he was much loved by students. In 1981 he was successfully nominated for the annual teaching award of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). Subsequently the Canadian Association of Geographers created a teaching award in his name.

In addition to duties at York, he held visiting positions at the State University of Washington, WA, Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, NS, and Atkinson College in York, ON. He was also a member of the IGU Commissions on Transportation, and on Tourism and Recreation.

Wolfe retired in 1983 having left a substantial intellectual and personal legacy. He legitimized research on tourism in geography, undertook pioneering scholarship, and inspired many geographers in his generation. His work provided the intellectual foundation for much of the research in contemporary tourism geography, with his publications on second homes cited more in the decade prior to his death than any time previous. His work was also influential beyond tourism and geography in the fields of regional science and marketing.

In 1988, the Association of American Geographers established the annual Roy Wolfe Award in his honor which recognizes “outstanding contributions to the field and discipline of Recreation, Tourism and Sport Geography.” The award has been won by geographers from Canada, Finland, New Zealand, and the United States to date.

Roy was predeceased by his wife Rosemary and daughter Cynthia but leaves behind four children (Robert David, Richard, Judy and Mitzi), six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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Forrest R. Pitts

Forrest Pitts, emeritus professor of geography at the University of Hawaii, died earlier this year at his home in Santa Rosa, California.

Pitts taught for many years at the University of Oregon, University of Pittsburgh, and Seoul National University. In 1989, he retired from the University of Hawaii after 35 years of teaching and field research. His professional interests were in Asia and in computational approaches to geographic science.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II and studying Japanese at the Language School in Boulder, Colorado, Pitts earned a bachelor’s degree in Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan. He continued his graduate studies in Michigan to earn a master of arts degree in Far Eastern Studies and a doctorate in Geography.

Pitts’ work is marked by fieldwork in Japan, Okinawa, and Korea. He was editor of Korean Studies, and served eight years as executive director of the International Geographical Union Commission on Quantitative Methods.

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J. Ross Mackay

J. Ross Mackay, Canada’s pre-eminent Arctic scientist and a world authority on permafrost, passed away peacefully on October 28, 2014, at the age of 98.

He served as President of the American Association of Geographers in 1969-70 and, as a Past President, will be honored with a full memorial in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. This is scheduled for publication in 2017.

In the meantime, if you wish to find out more about his life and work please refer to the obituary in the journal, Arctic.

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Robert Hutton

Long-standing member of the AAG, Robert “Bob” Hutton, of Alexandria, VA, passed away on October 19, 2014, at the age of 82.

Hutton received his Bachelor’s degree in Russian Studies from Haverford College, PA, in 1954. He also spent the summers of 1953 and 1954 at a Russian Summer School held at Middlebury College, VT.

He then enlisted in the Army, receiving a sharp shooter commendation during Basic Training much to his own surprise as he was blind in his right eye! He served during the Korean War from 1954 to 1957, specializing in languages.

Following this he continued his education at Columbia University, NY, graduating with a Master’s degree in the Geography of East Asia in 1962. His final thesis was titled “Trade Relations between Japan, Communist China, and the Soviet Union.”

Hutton then spent his career working for the National Security Agency and the Library of Congress, retiring from the latter in 1998.

During his retirement he had many hobbies, one of which was wine. He said that his background in geography helped him to understand the soil and climatic conditions important to the production of wine. As a member of the American Wine Society and a writer for various wine journals, he traveled to wine events including the Vin Expo in Bordeaux and the London Wine Fair.

Hutton joined the Association of American Geographers in 1962 and maintained his life-time interest in geography. He was delighted to attend the Annual Meeting in New York in 2012 to receive recognition for his 50 years of continuous membership.

After his first wife died in 2007, he remarried in 2010. He is survived by his sister Elizabeth MacDonald; four children, Edward, Charles, Grace, and Susan; and six grandchildren.

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Arnold J. Kreisman

Born in Brooklyn, New York on September 29, 1925 to parents Isidore and Minnie, Arnie Kreisman passed away at the age of 89 on October 13, 2014. A US Army veteran who served in the Occupation Forces in Frankfurt, Germany, Kreisman later became a professional cartographer and geographer.

Attaining his bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York, his master’s degree from Syracuse University, and finally his doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh, he was heavily involved in resource and development planning. During his career he produced relief maps for the Aero-Service Corporation in both Philadelphia and Santiago, Chile. He also worked in Paraguay, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Peru for the Organization of American States (OAS). With OAS, Arnie mapped the resources of countries, displaying the location of people in regard to ages, education, and skills, the location of natural resources, and the location of weather, water, and other geographic conditions to determine the best location for activities such as farming and manufacturing. Kreisman also had a political career, serving as a democratic committeeman in Montgomery County for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

After retiring he moved to Columbia, Maryland. Kreisman has two daughters, Erika and Julie, with his first wife, Janet Friedman, and a third daughter, Florence, with his second wife, Elena Pino, whom he had met in El Salvador. The father of successful professionals, his first two of his daughters both have careers as attorneys and his third daughter is a manager for the Early Childhood Instruction Team for D.C. public schools.

He is survived by his widow, his sister, Evelyn Prybutok, his daughters and son-in-laws, nieces and nephews, as well as four grandchildren, Alex, Katie, Najá, and Iris. He also has an unofficial “adopted son” named Juan Neffa, whom he brought to Pittsburgh from Paraguay as a teenager. Kreisman was a lifelong member of the AAG and will be missed dearly by his family, friends, and the geography community.

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Tom Rabenhorst

Tom Rabenhorst, Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems (GES) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), died Saturday after a long battle with brain cancer.

Tom began his career at UMBC in 1973 as a part-time instructor while also an Assistant Professor at Montgomery Community College. He became a full time lecturer at UMBC in 1975, teaching courses in physical geography, cartography and remote sensing, while also developing its highly successful training program in cartography.

Over his 40 years at UMBC, Tom trained hundreds of students who have gone on to careers with many federal, state and local agencies, as well as private companies. He was always seeking ways to challenge his students and his ability to get the very best from them is evidenced by the numerous awards they won for cartographic design. In particular, his 2003 Advanced Cartography class designed and produced The Digital Atlas of Maryland Agriculture that was awarded “Best in Show” and “Best Digital Entry” in the National Map Competition held by the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping, honors never before given to a student entry. In addition, his students had remarkable success in winning highly competitive and prestigious National Geographic Society internships.

Tom was the co-author of two monographs (Applied Cartography and Applied Cartography: Introduction to Remote Sensing), and the author of numerous published maps, including an important contribution to the Historical Atlas of the United States (National Geographic Society) that utilized the base maps he developed for the Historical U.S. County Outline Map Collection 1840-1980. Tom was an avid hiker and, together with his wife Carol, he hiked and mapped the trail systems of several state and local parks and published interpretative maps of each that have become highly popular. At the time of his death, Tom, along with GES colleague Jeff Halverson, was working on a textbook on Severe Storms to be published by Oxford University Press. Tom also served for several years as the Cartographic Editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, the flagship journal in American geography, and he was recognized for elevating the professional standards of cartographic contributions published in the journal.

Tom was a beloved friend to many and he impacted many lives at UMBC and beyond. He leaves behind many accomplishments but his legacy as a human being exceeds anything that can be written down in a curriculum vitae. His incredible vitality and willingness to help anyone who asked for his assistance will be missed.

Adapted with permission from a letter to the UMBC Community.

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Clarence Minkel

Bud Minkel passed away on September 22, 2014. Born and raised to a farming family in Austin, Minnesota, Bud would go on to see much more than just the rural landscape of the United States. Following high school graduation, he joined the United States Army and served in both the U.S. and Japan. He then went on to pursue his B.A. and Ph.D. in geography from Syracuse University.

Following his education, Bud became quite the world traveler, visiting every country in North, Central, and South America, Western and Southern Europe, China, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, as well as 30 African countries, and even Antarctica. He also successfully visited every county in the United States, a task that took him fifty years.

Bud spent time living in Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Japan, and Indonesia and had a leadership position in settling the border dispute between Ecuador and Peru in 1998. This world traveler would become the dean and a non-teaching emeritus professor at the Graduate School at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests were in economic geography and regional planning as well as Latin America.

He is survived by his wife, Phyllis and his five children, Thomas Minkel (Jackie), Sandra Topper (Jim), Theresa Giroux (Tom), Lorraine Ware (Phil), and many friends, colleagues, and fellow geographers. He was 86.

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Hans-Georg Bohle

AAG member Hans-Georg Bohle has passed away at the age of 66. Relevant in the field of human geography, he will be remembered by all that he taught, advised, and worked alongside. Hans attended the University of Göttingen and received his PhD in 1979, doing research on the Green Revolution in the Cauvery River Delta of southern India.

Hans held various academic positions including professor of cultural geography at the University of Freiburg (1989-1995), professor of geography of South Asia at the University of Heidelberg (1995-2004), and chair and professor of cultural geography and development geography at Bonn University (2004-2013). He retired in 2013.

He has published a variety of work, twelve monographs, eighty scientific journal articles, and sixty book chapters. He was also on the Steering Committee of Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) and was on the International Scientific Advisory Board of Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS), as well as a member of Academia Europaea and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

His research was focused on social vulnerability, specifically of people in critical regions. Interested primarily in food, water, and health, Hans sought to find explanations of the socio-spatial production of poverty and exclusion in the Global South and to identify people’s potentialities for human security and a life of self-determination, freedom, and dignity. He has been a fundamental contributor to risk and hazard research and has done work in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Chad, Sudan, Ghana, and Egypt. He will be remembered.

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