Halford John Mackinder
| Sir Halford Mackinder | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
15 February 1861 Gainsborough, England |
| Died | 6 March 1947 (aged 86) |
| Nationality | United Kingdom |
| Fields | Geography, Geopolitics, Geostrategy |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
| Influenced | Nicholas Spykman, Karl Haushofer, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dimitri Kitsikis |
| Notable awards | Charles P. Daly Medal (1943) |
Sir Halford John Mackinder PC (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) was an English geographer, academic, politician, the first Principal of University Extension College, Reading (which became the University of Reading) and Director of the London School of Economics, who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy.
Mackinder was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England, the son of a doctor, and educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Gainsborough (now Queen Elizabeth's High School), Epsom College and Christ Church, Oxford. At Oxford he started studying natural sciences, specialising in zoology under Henry Nottidge Moseley, who had been the naturalist on the Challenger expedition. When he turned to the study of history, he remarked that he was returning "to an old interest and took up modern history with the idea of seeing how the theory of evolution would appear in human development". He was a strong proponent of treating both physical geography and human geography as a single discipline. Mackinder served as President of the Oxford Union in 1883.
He received a degree in biology in 1883 and one in modern history the next year.
In 1887, he published "On the Scope and Methods of Geography", a manifesto for the New Geography. A few months later, he was appointed as Reader in Geography at the University of Oxford, where he introduced the teaching of the subject. As Mackinder himself put it, "a platform has been given to a geographer". This was arguably at the time the most prestigious academic position for a British geographer.
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