Michael Williams, FBA (1935–2009) was a Welsh historical geographer, known particularly for his work on deforestation. His book, "Deforesting the earth: from pre-history to global crisis" is the most comprehensive account ever written of when, where, and how humans have wrought what is surely the most dramatic change in Earth's surface since the end of the Pleistocene...about every aspect of human use of the forest and the forces that drive this use. [1] He had a personal chair at the University of Oxford from 1996. [2]
He was the second son of Benjamin Williams and his wife, Ethel Mary Marshell of Swansea, born in Rheanfa House Maternity Hospital. He studied at University College, Swansea from 1953, and fell under the influence of the geographer Frank Emery. He graduated B.A. in 1956, and Ph.D. in 1960 with a thesis on the Somerset Levels. By that time married, he moved on to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, working for an education diploma. [2]
Later in 1960, Williams took a lecturing post at the University of Adelaide, becoming reader in 1970. In 1978 he went to the University of Oxford, where he was a reader from 1990, professor from 1996, and a Fellow of Oriel College. [2] He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1989. [3]
Professor emeritus from 2002, Williams died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on 26 October 2009. [2]
Williams's books included: [2]
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Carl Ortwin Sauer was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the dean of American historical geography" and he was instrumental in the early development of the geography graduate school at Berkeley. One of his best known works was Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952). In 1927, Carl Sauer wrote the article "Recent Developments in Cultural Geography," which considered how cultural landscapes are made up of "the forms superimposed on the physical landscape."
David W. Harvey is a British Marxist economic geographer, podcaster, and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961. Harvey has authored many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city.
William George Hoskins was an English local historian who founded the first university department of English Local History. His great contribution to the study of history was in the field of landscape history.
Doreen Barbara Massey was a British social scientist and geographer. She specialized in Marxist geography, feminist geography, and cultural geography, as well as other topics. She was Professor of Geography at the Open University.
Sir David Glyndwr Tudor Williams, was a Welsh barrister and legal scholar. He was president of Wolfson College, Cambridge from 1980 to 1992. He was also vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge: on a part-time basis from 1989 to 1992, and then as the first full-time vice-chancellor from 1992 to 1996.
Deforestation during the Roman period was a result of the geographical expansion of the Roman Empire, with its increased population, large-scale agriculture, and unprecedented economic development. Roman expansion marks the transition in the Mediterranean from prehistory to the historical period beginning around 500 BC. Earth sustained a few million people 8,000 years ago and was still fundamentally pristine, but Rome drove human development in Western Europe and was a leading contributor of the deforestation around the Mediterranean.
Andrew P. "Pete" Vayda was a Hungarian-born American anthropologist and ecologist who was a distinguished professor emeritus of anthropology and ecology at Rutgers University.
Andrew Shaw Goudie is a geographer at the University of Oxford specialising in desert geomorphology, dust storms, weathering, and climatic change in the tropics. He is also known for his teaching and best-selling textbooks on human impacts on the environment. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of forty-one books and more than two hundred papers published in learned journals. He combines research and some teaching with administrative roles.
William Balée is a professor of anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Billie Lee Turner II is an American geographer and human-environmental scientist, member of the National Academy of Sciences and other honorary institutions. Prominent among the third generation of the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography and cultural ecological research, he has been a leader in bridging this work with the Chicago School of natural hazards and risk research. In August 2008, he took a position as the first Gilbert F. White Chair in Environment and Society at Arizona State University, where he is affiliated with the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the School of Sustainability. In November 2015, he was named a Regent’s Professor, the highest faculty honor that can be bestowed by Arizona State University.
John Gwyn Griffiths was a Welsh poet, Egyptologist and nationalist political activist who spent the largest span of his career lecturing at Swansea University.
Ruth S. DeFries is an environmental geographer who specializes in the use of remote sensing to study Earth's habitability under the influence of human activities, such as deforestation, that influence regulating biophysical and biogeochemical processes. She was one of 24 recipients of the 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2006.
William Maxfield Denevan is an American geographer. He is professor emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a prominent member of the Berkeley School of cultural-historical geography. He also worked in the Latin American Center and the Institute for Environmental Studies at Wisconsin. His research interests are in the historical ecology of the Americas, especially Amazonia and the Andes.
Susanna B. Hecht is an American geographer, professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and professor of international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Owain Jones FGS is a Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University (UK). He was previously Reader in Cultural Geography: Place, Nature and Landscape at the Countryside & Community Research Institute and member of staff of the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment and Technology, University of the West of England.
Emyr Estyn Evans CBE was a Welsh geographer and archaeologist, whose primary field of interest was the Irish neolithic.
Robin Alan Butlin is emeritus professor of geography, and visiting research fellow, based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. Robin was a professor of historical geography and started work at Leeds in 1998 as a visiting professor of geography after working as principal and professor of historical geography at the University College of Ripon and York St John in York.
Clarence James Glacken was Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He was known for a 1967 magnum opus, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, that demonstrated how perceptions of the natural environment shaped the course of human events over millennia. He is recognised as a key contributor to the field of environmental history.
Ian Gordon Simmons is a British geographer. He retired as Professor of Geography from the University of Durham in 2001. He has made significant contributions to environmental history and prehistoric archaeology.
Sir Henry Clifford Darby, commonly known as Sir Clifford Darby, was a Welsh historical geographer and academic. He was a key figure in the establishment of historical geography as a subject in British academia, and occupied several chairs of geography.
