Huntington, Ellsworth

Huntington, Ellsworth, 1876–1947, American geographer, b. Galesburg, Ill., grad. Beloit College, 1897, M.A. Harvard, 1902, Ph.D. Yale, 1909. He taught at Euphrates College, Turkey (1897–1901); accompanied the Pumpelly (1903) and Barrett (1905–6) expeditions to central Asia; and wrote of his Asian experiences in Explorations in Turkestan (1905) and The Pulse of Asia (1907). He taught geography at Yale (1907–15) and from 1917 was a research associate there, devoting his time chiefly to climatic and anthropogeographic studies. The Climatic Factor (1914), Civilization and Climate (1915, rev. ed. 1924), and, with S. S. Visher, Climatic Changes (1922) were among his works. He also wrote Principles of Human Geography (with S. W. Cushing, 5th ed. 1940) and Mainsprings of Civilization (1945).

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Huntington, Ellsworth 

Born Sept. 16, 1876, in Gales-burg, III.; died Oct. 17, 1947, in New Haven, Conn. American geographer.

Huntington was a professor at Yale University from 1917 to 1945. He was an adherent of geographic determinism and geopolitics. In his writings he attempted to show that differences in natural conditions, and climatic differences in particular, explain the ascendancy of the “white” population of the countries of the temperate zone over the “colored” peoples of the tropical countries.

WORKS

The Climatic Factor as Illustrated in Arid America. Washington, D.C., 1914.
Civilization and Climate, 3rd ed., New Haven, 1924.
Principles of Human Geography, 3rd ed. New York, 1924. (With S. W. Cushing.)
Mainsprings of Civilization. New York, 1945.