Isaiah Bowman
| Isaiah Bowman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 26, 1878 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | January 6, 1950 (aged 71) Baltimore, Maryland, USA |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Geography |
| Institutions |
American Geographical Society Johns Hopkins University |
| Alma mater |
Harvard University Yale University |
| Known for | Founding Director, American Geographical Society President, Johns Hopkins University |
Isaiah Bowman, AB, Ph. D. (December 26, 1878, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – January 6, 1950, Baltimore, United States) was an American geographer and President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935-1948.
Bowman was born in Berlin, Ontario, Canada, a village renamed in 1916 as Kitchener, near Waterloo, Ontario. His family was Mennonite, and, at the age of eight weeks, Bowman’s father moved his family to a log cabin in Brown City, Michigan, sixty miles north of Detroit. In 1900, Isaiah became an American citizen and began intensive study to prepare himself for admittance to Harvard.Studying first at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti (now Eastern Michigan University), Bowman came to the attention of Mark Jefferson, a geographer who had studied at Harvard under the most prominent geographer of the day, William Morris Davis. Jefferson recommended Bowman to Davis, smoothing the way for Bowman’s study. After one year, by prearrangement with Jefferson, Bowman returned to Michigan in 1903 for a year, before returning again to Harvard.
After graduating from Harvard in 1905, he became an instructor and graduate student at Yale, where he stayed for ten years. While at Yale, Bowman participated in three study expeditions to South America, in 1907, 1911 and 1913; on the third trip, he served as the leader of the group. This research provided material for his PhD dissertation, conferred in 1909, and for several publications. In 1915, he became the first director of the American Geographical Society (AGS).
Some of his more notable works include:
When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Bowman placed the resources of the AGS at the government’s service, and he was asked to “gather and prepare data” to assist with a future peace conference once the fighting stopped. Bowman sailed for France in December 1918 as Chief Territorial Specialist, but he quickly assumed an administrative role as well, gaining the ear of President Woodrow Wilson and his chief adviser, Colonel Edward House. Bowman thus played a major role in determining distribution of land areas and national borders, especially in the Balkans, as part of the Paris Peace Conference.
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