Robert Kates

Robert W. Kates (born January 31, 1929, age 88) is an American geographer and independent scholar in Trenton, Maine, and University Professor (Emeritus) at Brown University.

Kates was born in Brooklyn, New York. Unusual for an academic, he never completed an undergraduate degree. He studied Economics at New York University from 1946-8, but dropped out. He went to work in a steel mill in Indiana. He had a chance encounter with a naturalist in a state park in Indiana when on vacation with his family, and this meeting inspired him to become an elementary school teacher. To realise this career he signed up for night school at Indiana University, Gary in 1957, when aged 28. One of his classes to become a teacher was in geography. Having found his calling and his discipline, he sought study advice from Gilbert F. White at the University of Chicago. White gave him some key texts to read, Kates returned to discuss them, White recognized his abilities and steered him through an MA and eventually a PhD in Geography (1962). Kates taught at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University from 1962 until 1987. At Clark he founded CENTED (the Centre for technology, environment, and development), now part of the Marsh Institute, where he remains a Distinguished Scientist. He worked in Africa with Clark colleagues, and also developed and directed a resource assessment centre at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (from 1967–68).

Kates helped to establish the international Initiative for Science and Technology for Sustainability, was Executive Editor of Environment magazine for many years, and is still a Senior Associate at Harvard University.

From 1986 to 1992 he was Professor and Director of the interdisciplinary World Hunger Program at Brown University. Kates retired relatively early, became an 'independent scholar' and moved to Trenton, Maine in the early 1990s with his wife Ellie. He has 6 grandchildren. He remained professionally active until his mid 80s and in 2008, was appointed the inaugural Presidential Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Maine, Orono (at age 79).

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