of Wisconsin–Madison is named in his honor. Robinson served as president of the International Cartographic Association (1972–76), and as vice president and president of the Association of American Geographers. He was awarded the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal by the International Cartographic Association in 1980. Personal life Robinson married Mary Elizabeth Coffin (1910–-1992), daughter of John R. Coffin and Bessie Morris Coffin, on December 23, 1938, in Franklin County, Ohio. They had two children, a son and a daughter. After the death of his first wife, Robinson remarried in 1993. His second wife was Martha Elizabeth Rodabaugh Phillips (1914–2010), a widow, with whom he had attended school in Oxford, Ohio. Work Robinson was a prolific writer and influential philosopher on cartography: According to Robinson,“the aim of cartographic design is to present the geographical data in such a fashion that the map, as a whole, appears as an integrated unit and so that each item included is clear, legible, and neither more nor less prominent than it should be.” Like Richard Edes Harrison, another successful wartime cartographer, Robinson warned against the dangers of blindly accepting conventions in map design, such as always putting north at the top of the map. Robinson wrote that neither logic nor educational value required placing north at the top of the map. In The Look of Maps (1952) which was based on his doctoral research, Robinson urged cartographers to consider the function of a map as an integral part of the design process. In the text In The Nature of Maps (1976), Robinson and co-author Barbara Bartz Petchenik created the term map percipient, a map user who interacts with a map in a discerning way and not merely as a casual observer. The authors stressed that ... the nature of the map as an image and the manner in which it functions as a communication device between the cartographer and percipient need much deeper consideration and analysis than they have yet received. Robinson also co-authored a widely used textbook, Elements of Cartography, the sixth and last edition of which was published in 1995. Robinson projection One of Robinson's most notable accomplishments is the Robinson projection. In 1961, Rand McNally asked Robinson to choose a projection for use as a world map that, among other criteria, was uninterrupted, had limited distortion, and was pleasing to the eye of general viewers. Robinson could not find a projection that satisfied