Portal:Geography

The Geography Portal

Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê 'Earth' and gráphō 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."

The history of geography as a discipline spans cultures and millennia, being independently developed by multiple groups, and cross-pollinated by trade between these groups. Geography as a discipline dates back to the earliest attempts to understand the world spatially, with the earliest example of an attempted world map dating to the 9th century BC in ancient Babylon. Origins of many of the concepts in geography can be traced to Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who may have coined the term "geographia" (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC). The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as the title of a book by Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 AD). During the Middle Ages, geography was influenced by Islamic scholars, such as Muhammad al-Idrisi, producing detailed maps of the world. The Age of Discovery was influential in the development of geography, as European explorers mapped the New World. Modern developments include the development of geomatics and geographic information science.

The core concepts of geography consistent across all approaches are a focus on space, place, time, and scale. Today, geography is an extremely broad discipline with multiple approaches and modalities. The main branches of geography are physical geography, human geography, and technical geography. Physical geography focuses on the natural environment, human geography focuses on how humans interact with the Earth, and technical geography focuses on the development of tools for understanding geography. Techniques employed can generally be broken down into quantitative and qualitative approaches, with many studies taking mixed-methods approaches. Common techniques include cartography, remote sensing, interviews, and surveying. (Full article...)

Featured article -

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Image 1

Crean on the Endurance Expedition, February 1915

Thomas Crean (Irish: Tomás Ó Cuirín; c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (AM).

Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. (Full article...)
Image 2

View inside the caldera

Incapillo is a Pleistocene-age caldera (a depression formed by the collapse of a volcano) in the La Rioja Province of Argentina. It is the southernmost volcanic centre in the Andean Central Volcanic Zone (CVZ) that erupted during the Pleistocene. Incapillo is one of several ignimbrite or caldera systems that, along with 44 active stratovolcanoes, comprise the CVZ.

Subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate is responsible for most of the volcanism in the CVZ. After activity in the volcanic arc of the western Maricunga Belt ceased six million years ago, volcanism commenced in the Incapillo region, forming the high volcanic edifices Monte Pissis, Cerro Bonete Chico and Sierra de Veladero. Later, a number of lava domes were emplaced between these volcanoes. (Full article...)
Image 3

CCC-built overlook looking south into Pine Creek Gorge

Colton Point State Park is a 368-acre (149 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is on the west side of the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, which is 800 feet (240 m) deep and nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 m) across at this location. The park extends from the creek in the bottom of the gorge up to the rim and across part of the plateau to the west. Colton Point State Park is known for its views of the Pine Creek Gorge, and offers opportunities for picnicking, hiking, fishing and hunting, whitewater boating, and camping. Colton Point is surrounded by Tioga State Forest and its sister park, Leonard Harrison State Park, on the east rim. The park is on a state forest road in Shippen Township 5 miles (8 km) south of U.S. Route 6.

Pine Creek flows through the park and has carved the gorge through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. Native Americans once used the Pine Creek Path along the creek. The path was later used by lumbermen, and then became the course of a railroad from 1883 to 1988. Since 1996, the 62-mile (100 km) Pine Creek Rail Trail has followed the creek through the gorge. The Pine Creek Gorge was named a National Natural Landmark in 1968 and is also protected as a Pennsylvania State Natural Area and Important Bird Area, while Pine Creek is a Pennsylvania Scenic and Wild River. The gorge is home to many species of plants and animals, some of which have been reintroduced to the area. (Full article...)
Image 4

Enceladus imaged by the Cassini orbiter, October 2015

Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn and the 18th largest in the Solar System. It is about 500 kilometres (310 miles) in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It is covered by clean, freshly deposited snow hundreds of meters thick, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Consequently, its surface temperature at noon reaches only −198 °C (75.1 K; −324.4 °F), far colder than a light-absorbing body would be. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide variety of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrain.

Enceladus was discovered on August 28, 1789, by William Herschel, but little was known about it until the two Voyager spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981. In 2005, the spacecraft Cassini started multiple close flybys of Enceladus, revealing its surface and environment in greater detail. In particular, Cassini discovered water-rich plumes venting from the south polar region. Cryovolcanoes near the south pole shoot geyser-like jets of water vapour, molecular hydrogen, other volatiles, and solid material, including sodium chloride crystals and ice particles, into space, totalling about 200 kilograms (440 pounds) per second. More than 100 geysers have been identified. Some of the water vapour falls back as snow, now several hundred metres thick; the rest escapes and supplies most of the material making up Saturn's E ring. According to NASA scientists, the plumes are similar in composition to comets. In 2014, NASA reported that Cassini had found evidence for a large south polar subsurface ocean of liquid water with a thickness of around 10 km (6 mi). The existence of Enceladus's subsurface ocean has since been mathematically modelled and replicated. (Full article...)
Image 5

One of T4's sister ships, T3

T4 was a seagoing torpedo boat operated by the Royal Yugoslav Navy between 1921 and 1932. Originally 79 T, a 250t-class torpedo boat of the Austro-Hungarian Navy built in 1914, she was armed with two 66 mm (2.6 in) guns and four 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, and could carry 10–12 naval mines. She saw active service during World War I, performing convoy, patrol, escort and minesweeping tasks, anti-submarine operations and shore bombardment missions. In 1917, the suffixes of all Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats were removed, and thereafter she was referred to as 79. Underway during the short-lived mutiny by Austro-Hungarian sailors in early February 1918, her captain realised the danger and put her crew ashore. She was part of the escort force for the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought Szent István during the action that resulted in the sinking of that ship by Italian torpedo boats in June 1918.

Following Austria-Hungary's defeat in 1918, 79 was allocated to the Navy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which later became the Royal Yugoslav Navy, and was renamed T4. At the time, she and the seven other 250t-class boats were the only modern sea-going vessels of the fledgling maritime force. During the interwar period, T4 and the rest of the navy were involved in training exercises and cruises to friendly ports, but activity was limited by reduced naval budgets. In 1932, she ran aground on the island of Drvenik Mali off the central Dalmatian coast and the hull broke in half. The bow remained on the island, and the stern was towed to the Tivat Arsenal in the Bay of Kotor. As a result, it became a standing joke among Yugoslav sailors that this made T4 the "world's longest torpedo boat". Eventually, both sections were scrapped where they were. (Full article...)
Image 6

The air-tractor sledge was a converted fixed-wing aircraft taken on the 1911–1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, the first plane to be taken to the Antarctic.

Expedition leader Douglas Mawson had planned to use the Vickers R.E.P. Type Monoplane as a reconnaissance and search and rescue tool, and to assist in publicity, but the aircraft crashed heavily during a test flight in Adelaide, only two months before Mawson's scheduled departure date. The plane was nevertheless sent south with the expedition, after having been stripped of its wings and metal sheathing from the fuselage. (Full article...)
Image 7

Trinity Mountains in Boise National Forest

Boise National Forest is a National Forest covering 2,203,703 acres (8,918.07 km²) of the U.S. state of Idaho. Created on July 1, 1908, from part of Sawtooth National Forest, it is managed by the U.S. Forest Service as five units: the Cascade, Emmett, Idaho City, Lowman, and Mountain Home ranger districts.

The Idaho Batholith underlies most of Boise National Forest, forming the forest's Boise, Salmon River, and West mountain ranges; the forest reaches a maximum elevation of 9,730 feet (2,970 m) on Steel Mountain. Common land cover includes sagebrush steppe and spruce-fir forests; there are 9,600 miles (15,400 km) of streams and rivers and 15,400 acres (62 km²) of lakes and reservoirs. Boise National Forest contains 75 percent of the known populations of Sacajawea's bitterroot, a flowering plant endemic to Idaho. (Full article...)
Image 8

Little Thetford looking north-east. Ely is north—top-left. The A10 road at Thetford corner is west and the River Great Ouse is east. The south-west block of housing is where the Iron Age settlement and Romano-British tile kiln were found

Little Thetford /ˈθɛtfɔːrd/ is a small village in the civil parish of Thetford, 3 miles (5 km) south of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England, about 76 miles (122 km) by road from London. The village is built on a boulder clay island surrounded by flat fenland countryside, typical of settlements in this part of the East of England.

During the Mesolithic era, the fenland basin was mostly dry and forested, although subject to salt and fresh water incursions. The marshes and meres of this fenland may therefore have been difficult to occupy, other than seasonally, but there is evidence of human settlement on the island since the late Neolithic Age; a Bronze Age causeway linked the village with the nearby Barway, to the south-east. An investigation undertaken before a 1995 development in the village discovered a farm and large tile-kiln of Romano-British origin; further investigations uncovered an earlier settlement of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The Roman road Akeman Street passed through the north-west corner of the parish, and the lost 7th century Anglo-Saxon village of Cratendune may be nearby. (Full article...)
Image 9

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (occasionally referred to as the ITAE) of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. After Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition in 1911, this crossing remained, in Shackleton's words, the "one great main object of Antarctic journeyings". Shackleton's expedition failed to accomplish this objective but became recognised instead as an epic feat of endurance.

Shackleton had served in the Antarctic on the Discovery expedition of 1901–1904 and had led the Nimrod expedition of 1907–1909. In this new venture, he proposed to sail to the Weddell Sea and to land a shore party near Vahsel Bay, in preparation for a transcontinental march via the South Pole to the Ross Sea. A supporting group, the Ross Sea party, would meanwhile establish camp in McMurdo Sound and from there lay a series of supply depots across the Ross Ice Shelf to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. These depots would be essential for the transcontinental party's survival, as the group would not be able to carry enough provisions for the entire crossing. The expedition required two ships: Endurance under Shackleton for the Weddell Sea party, and Aurora, under Aeneas Mackintosh, for the Ross Sea party. (Full article...)
Image 10

Clockwise from top: the Village Center; village pool at Law Memorial Park; Briarcliff High School; Briarcliff Manor Public Library; village clock and Municipal Building.

Briarcliff Manor (/ˈbraɪ.ərklɪf/) is a suburban village in Westchester County, New York, 30 miles (50 km) north of New York City. It is on 5.9 square miles (15 km²) of land on the east bank of the Hudson River, geographically shared by the towns of Mount Pleasant and Ossining. Briarcliff Manor includes the communities of Scarborough and Chilmark, and is served by the Scarborough station of the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line. A section of the village, including buildings and homes covering 376 acres (152 ha), is part of the Scarborough Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The village motto is "A village between two rivers", reflecting Briarcliff Manor's location between the Hudson and Pocantico Rivers. Although the Pocantico is the primary boundary between Mount Pleasant and Ossining, since its incorporation the village has spread into Mount Pleasant.

In the precolonial era, the village's area was inhabited by a band of the Wappinger tribes of Native Americans. In the early 19th century, the area was known as Whitson's Corners. Walter William Law moved to the area and purchased lands during the 1890s. Law developed the village, establishing schools, churches, parks, and the Briarcliff Lodge. Briarcliff Manor was incorporated as a village in 1902, and celebrated its centennial on November 21, 2002. The village has grown from 331 people when established to 7,569 at the 2020 census. (Full article...)
Image 11

Trafford is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England, with an estimated population of 241,025 in 2024. It covers 106 square kilometres (41 sq mi) and includes the towns of Altrincham, Stretford, Urmston, Partington and Sale. The borough was formed in 1974 as a merger of six former districts and part of a seventh. The River Mersey flows through the borough, separating North Trafford from South Trafford, and the historic counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. Trafford is the seventh-most populous district in Greater Manchester.

There is evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Roman activity in the area, two castles – one of them a Scheduled Ancient Monument – and over 200 listed buildings. In the late 19th century, the population rapidly expanded with the arrival of the railway. Trafford is the home of Manchester United F.C. and Lancashire County Cricket Club, as well as Altrincham F.C. and Trafford F.C. The Imperial War Museum North, opened in 2002, is located in the borough. (Full article...)
Image 12

Dusk skyline of the city centre

George Town is the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang. It is the core city of the George Town Conurbation, Malaysia's second largest metropolitan area with a population of 2.84 million and the second largest metropolitan economy in the country. The city proper spans an area of 306 km² (118 sq mi) encompassing Penang Island and surrounding islets, and had a population of 794,313 as of 2020.

Classified as a "Gamma −" city, the second highest in Malaysia after Kuala Lumpur, George Town is the commercial centre for northern Malaysia and one of the few high-income economies of the cities outside the Klang Valley. According to Euromonitor International and the Economist Intelligence Unit, George Town has the highest potential for revenue growth among all Malaysian cities and contributed nearly 8 per cent of the country's personal disposable income in 2015, second only to Kuala Lumpur. Its technological sector, anchored by hundreds of multinational companies, has made George Town the top exporter in the country. The Penang International Airport links George Town to several regional cities, while a ferry service and two road bridges connect the city to the rest of Peninsular Malaysia. Swettenham Pier is the busiest cruise terminal in the country. (Full article...)
Image 13

Sand dunes in Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is a national park of the United States that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley.

The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. (Full article...)
Image 14

Before drainage, the Everglades, a region of tropical wetlands in southern Florida, were an interwoven mesh of marshes and prairies covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 km²). The Everglades is both a vast watershed that has historically extended from Lake Okeechobee 100 miles (160 km) south to Florida Bay (around one-third of the southern Florida peninsula), and many interconnected ecosystems within a geographic boundary. It is such a unique meeting of water, land, and climate that the use of either singular or plural to refer to the Everglades is appropriate. When Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote her definitive description of the region in 1947, she used the metaphor "River of Grass" to explain the blending of water and plant life.

Although sawgrass and sloughs are the enduring geographical icons of the Everglades, other ecosystems are just as vital, and the borders marking them are subtle or nonexistent. Pinelands and tropical hardwood hammocks are located throughout the sloughs; the trees, rooted in soil inches above the peat, marl, or water, support a variety of wildlife. The oldest and tallest trees are cypresses, whose roots are specially adapted to grow underwater for months at a time. The Big Cypress Swamp is well known for its 500-year-old cypresses, though cypress domes can appear throughout the Everglades. As the freshwater from Lake Okeechobee makes its way to Florida Bay, it meets saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico; mangrove forests grow in this transitional zone, providing nursery and nesting conditions for many species of birds, fish, and invertebrates. The marine environment of Florida Bay is also considered part of the Everglades because its seagrasses and aquatic life are attracted to the constant discharge of freshwater. (Full article...)
Image 15

Altrincham (/ˈɒltrɪŋəm/ OL-tring-əm, locally /ˈɒltrɪŋɡəm/) is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It is located south of the River Mersey, 8 miles (13 km) south-west of Manchester, 3 miles (5 km) south-west of Sale and 10 miles (16 km) east of Warrington. At the 2021 census, the built up area had a population of 49,680.

It lies within the historic county boundaries of Cheshire and became part of Greater Manchester in 1974. Altrincham developed as a market town following the right to hold a market being granted in 1290; the market continues today. Further socioeconomic development came with the extension of the Bridgewater Canal to Altrincham in 1765 and the arrival of the railway in 1849, stimulating industrial activity in the town. Outlying villages were absorbed by Altrincham's subsequent growth, along with the grounds of Dunham Massey Hall, formerly the home of the Earl of Stamford and now a tourist attraction, with three Grade I listed buildings and a deer park. (Full article...)

Vital article

Vital articles to understand Geography.

North America is a continent in the Northern and Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. The region includes Middle America comprising the Caribbean, Central America, and Northern America. (Full article...)

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Selected pictures

Image 1
Australia
Photo: MODIS (NASA)
The geography of Australia, the world's smallest continent, encompasses a wide variety of biogeographic regions. By surface area, it is the sixth-largest country in the world, but as can be seen in this composite satellite image, much of the interior is arid desert. The vast majority of the human population is concentrated along the eastern and southeastern coasts, and it is the fiftieth most populous nation.
Image 2
Alexander von Humboldt
Map: William C. Woodbridge; Restoration: Jujutacular and Lise Broer
An isothermal map of the world, based on the research of Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist whose work laid the foundation for the sciences of physical geography and meteorology, among other things. By delineating "isothermal lines", he simultaneously suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries.
Image 3
Geography of Germany
Map credit: Lencer and NordNordWest
A general map, showing the geography of Germany, the seventh largest country in Europe and the second most populous. Located in Central Europe, Germany is second only to Russia in the number of borders it shares with other European countries (9).
Image 4
Yellowstone National Park
Map credit: Heinrich C. Berann
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located mostly in Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular landmarks. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. The park is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

This picture is a stylized panoramic map of Yellowstone National Park as viewed from the northeast, created in 1991 by Austrian painter and cartographer Heinrich C. Berann for the National Park Service. Yellowstone Lake and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone are in the center, while Old Faithful is visible on the right, next to a brown building representing the Old Faithful Inn. Jackson Lake and the peaks of the Teton Range are depicted in the background.
Image 5
Chamberlin trimetric projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Chamberlin trimetric projection is a map projection where three points are fixed on the globe and the points on the sphere are mapped onto a plane by triangulation. It was developed in 1946 by Wellman Chamberlin for the National Geographic Society. It is neither conformal nor equal-area, but rather attempts to minimize distortion of distances everywhere with the side-effect of balancing between areal equivalence and conformality.
Image 6
Geography of Africa
Photo: NASA
A composite satellite image of the geography of Africa, the Earth's second-largest continent, and its adjacent islands. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from much of Asia by the Red Sea, Africa is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez. For geopolitical purposes, the Sinai Peninsula – east of the Suez Canal – is often considered part of Africa, although geographically it belongs in Asia. Africa can be divided into a number of geographic zones: The Atlas Mountains in the north, the Sahara, the coastal plains, and the inner plateaus.
Image 7
Tobler hyperelliptical projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Tobler hyperelliptical projection is a family of equal-area pseudocylindrical map projections first described by Waldo R. Tobler in 1973. The imagery used for the map is derived from NASA's Blue Marble summer months composite, with oceans lightened to enhance legibility and contrast.
Image 8
Nautical chart
Map credit: Fernão Vaz Dourado
A pre-Mercator nautical chart of West Africa from 1571, by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado. It is done using the so-called "plane chart model", where observed latitudes and magnetic directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat.
Image 9
Mitchell Map
Author: John Mitchell; scan: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
The Mitchell Map is the most comprehensive map of eastern North America made during the colonial era. Measuring about 6.5 ft (2.0 m) wide by 4.5 ft (1.4 m) high, it was produced by John Mitchell in 1757 in eight separate sheets. The map was used during the Treaty of Paris for defining the boundaries of the United States, and remains important today for resolving border disputes.
Image 10
Cathedral Peak Granodiorite
Map: Grandiose, based on a map by the United States Geological Survey
A geological map of Yosemite National Park (full size), showing the Cathedral Peak Granodiorite, the largest unit in the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, which in turn is the largest granitic suite in the park.
Cathedral Peak Granodiorite
Rest of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite
Image 11
Waldseemüller map
Credit: Martin Waldseemüller
The Waldseemüller map is a map drawn by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller originally published in April 1507. It was one of the first maps to chart latitude and longitude precisely, the first map to use the name "America", and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia.
Image 12
Van der Grinten projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The van der Grinten projection is a compromise map projection that is neither equal-area nor conformal. It projects the entire Earth into a circle, though the polar regions are subject to extreme distortion. The projection was the first of four proposed by Alphons J. van der Grinten in 1904, and, unlike perspective projections, is an arbitrary geometric construction on the plane. It was adopted as the National Geographic Society's reference map of the world from 1922 until 1988.
Image 13
Sahara
Image credit: NASA
A satellite image of the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert and second largest desert after Antarctica at over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), almost as large as the United States. The Sahara is located in Northern Africa and is 2.5 million years old.
Image 14
South America
Photo: Blue Marble by Reto Stockli, NASA/GSFC
A composite relief satellite image of South America, the fourth-largest continent. South America occupies the southern portion of the landmass in the Western Hemisphere. The continent is generally delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border. Almost all of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate, as do nearby outlying islands.
Image 15
Antarctica
Photo credit: NASA
Antarctica, the continent surrounding the Earth's South Pole, is the coldest place on Earth and is almost entirely covered by ice. Antarctica was discovered in late January 1820. Too cold and dry to support virtually any vascular plants, Antartica's flora presently consists of around 250 lichens, 100 mosses, 25-30 liverworts, and around 700 terrestrial and aquatic algal species.

Featured biography

Featured biography articles in geography

Georg Forster in 1781, age 26

Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster (German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfɔʁstɐ]; 27 November 1754 – 10 January 1794), was a German-Polish geographer, naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, A Voyage Round the World, contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature.

After returning to continental Europe, Forster turned toward academia. He taught natural history at the Collegium Carolinum in the Ottoneum, Kassel (1778–84), and later at the Academy of Vilna (Vilnius University) (1784–87). In 1788, he became head librarian at the University of Mainz. Most of his scientific work during this time consisted of essays on botany and ethnology, but he also prefaced and translated many books about travel and exploration, including a German translation of Cook's diaries. (Full article...)

More featured biographies

Did you know

Did you know it about Geography?

... that teams of college students have competed in the World Geography Bowl at the American Association of Geographers' annual meeting since 1993?
... that technical geography, which includes the application of computer cartography and remote sensing, has origins in Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic cartography?
... that the second president of the American Association of Geographers had no formal geography education?
... that a map from the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land was used to negotiate the borders of Mandatory Palestine?

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