Bowman, Isaiah

Bowman, Isaiah

(1878–1950) geographer; born in Berlin (renamed Kitchener), Ontario, Canada. He studied at Ferris Institute, Big Rapids, Mich., and then at Ypsilanti's Normal College under the tutelage of Mark Jefferson. The latter sent him to Harvard to study for a doctorate with W. M. Davis. Bowman assumed an academic post at Yale University in 1905; in 1915 he accepted the Directorate of the American Geographical Society; and in 1935 he assumed the presidency of Johns Hopkins University. In 1918–19 he had directed the "Inquiry" and then was chief of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at the Paris Peace Conference; during World War II he was influential with the State Department. His most significant works include Forest Physiography (1911), The Andes of Southern Peru (1916), The New World (1921), and Geography in Relation to the Social Sciences (1934).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.