David Stoddart (geographer)
| David R. Stoddart | |
|---|---|
| Born |
15 November 1937 , England |
| Died | 23 November 2014 (aged 77) Berkeley, California, US |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | biogeography, coral reefs, atolls |
| Institutions |
University of Cambridge University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD.) |
David Ross Stoddart, OBE (15 November 1937 – 23 November 2014) was a British physical geographer known for the study of coral reefs and atolls. He was also known for key works on the history and philosophy of geography as an academic discipline. He was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and then professor and later emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Stoddart grew up in , north-east England. His parents both served in France during the First World War, his father with the Royal Flying Corps and his mother as a nurse. His father later became an engineer working in the construction of heavy industrial buildings for Ashmore, Benson, and Pease (later Davy International; now part of Siemens). He had two siblings.
He married fellow Cambridge geographer June in 1961 and had a daughter, Aldabra (named after the island) and a son, Michael. He collected a very large private library in Berkeley.
Stoddart suffered from diabetes and skin cancer in later life. He died in Berkeley, California on 23 November 2014.
Stoddart was possibly the first person from his local grammar school (now demolished) to enter the University of Cambridge, in 1956 (a schoolfriend secured a place at Oxford). He studied tropical geography at St.John's College with Alfred Steers from 1956, graduating with a first class degree in 1959. His introduction to coral reefs came on the Cambridge Expedition to British Honduras (Belize), 1959–60. He returned there 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. He gained a Cambridge PhD for this work in 1964 and was appointed lecturer in Geography at Cambridge, rising through the ranks. He was a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1987. In the mid-1980s he was a Regents Fellow at the Smithsonian.
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