A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is
geography, the study of Earth's
natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" and the Greek suffix, "graphy", meaning "description", so a geographer is someone who studies the earth.[1] The word "geography" is a
Middle French word that is believed to have been first used in 1540.[2]
Although geographers are historically known as people who make
maps, map making is actually the field of study of
cartography, a subset of geography. Geographers do not study only the details of the natural environment or human society, but they also study the reciprocal relationship between these two. For example, they study how the natural environment contributes to human society and how human society affects the natural environment.[3]
In particular, physical geographers study the natural environment while human geographers study human society and culture. Some geographers are practitioners of GIS (
geographic information system) and are often employed by local, state, and federal government agencies as well as in the private sector by environmental and engineering firms.[4]
The paintings by
Johannes Vermeer titled The Geographer and The Astronomer are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting in 1668–69.
Subdividing geography is challenging, as the discipline is broad, interdisciplinary, ancient, and has been approached differently by different cultures. Attempts have gone back centuries, and include the "Four traditions of geography" and applied "branches."[5][6][7]
The four traditions of geography were proposed in 1964 by William D. Pattison in a paper titled "The Four Traditions of Geography" appearing in the
Journal of Geography.[5][8] These traditions are:
Carl Ritter (1779–1859) – occupied the first chair of geography at Berlin University.
David Harvey (born 1935) – Marxist geographer and author of theories on spatial and urban geography, winner of the
Vautrin Lud Prize.
Doreen Massey (1944–2016) – scholar in the space and places of
globalization and its pluralities; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
Edward Soja (1940–2015) – worked on regional development, planning and governance and coined the terms
synekism and postmetropolis; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize.
^"geography (n.)"(Web article). Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper. n.d.
Archived from the original on 1 August 2017. Retrieved 10 October 2018.