on regional development, planning and governance and coined the terms synekism and postmetropolis; winner of the Vautrin Lud Prize. Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932) – first female president of the American Association of Geographers. Eratosthenes ( 276–c. 195/194 BC) – calculated the size of the Earth. Ernest Burgess (1886–1966) – creator of the concentric zone model. Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) – cartographer who produced the Mercator projection John Francon Williams (1854–1911) – author of The Geography of the Oceans. Karl Butzer (1934–2016) – German-American geographer, cultural ecologist and environmental archaeologist. Michael Frank Goodchild (born 1944) – GIS scholar and winner of the RGS founder's medal in 2003. Muhammad al-Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي; Latin: Dreses) (1100–1165) – author of Nuzhatul Mushtaq. Nigel Thrift (born 1949) – originator of non-representational theory. Paul Vidal de La Blache (1845–1918) – founder of the French school of geopolitics, wrote the principles of human geography. Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170) – compiled Greek and Roman knowledge into the book Geographia. Radhanath Sikdar (1813–1870) – calculated the height of Mount Everest. Roger Tomlinson (1933 – 2014) – the primary originator of modern geographic information systems. Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) – co-founder of the London School of Economics, Geographical Association. Strabo (64/63 BC – c. AD 24) – wrote GeographicaGeographica, one of the first books outlining the study of geography. Waldo Tobler (1930-2018) – coined the first law of geography. Walter Christaller (1893–1969) – human geographer and inventor of central place theory. William Morris Davis (1850–1934) – father of American geography and developer of the cycle of erosion. Yi-Fu Tuan (1930-2022) – Chinese-American scholar credited with starting humanistic geography as a discipline. Institutions and societies American Association of Geographers American Geographical Society Anton Melik Geographical Institute (Slovenia) Gamma Theta Upsilon (international) Institute of Geographical Information Systems (Pakistan) International Geographical Union Karachi Geographical Society (Pakistan) National Geographic Society (US) Royal Canadian Geographical Society Royal Danish Geographical Society Royal Geographical Society (UK) Russian Geographical Society See also Geographers on Film Geography Human geography List of geographers Outline of geography Physical geography Technical geography References Further reading Steven Seegel. Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe. University of Chicago Press, 2018. . External links Science occupations Social science occupations Humanities occupations Academic disciplines