Emmanuel de Martonne (, 1 April 1873 – 24 July 1955) was a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

geographer. He participated in the

Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include: Listed by name Paris Accords may refer to: * Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...

Early life and education

Martonne was born on 1 April 1873 in

Chabris Chabris () is a commune in the Indre department in central France. Located at an important river crossing-place on the road from Valençay to Romorantin with a bridge since Roman times, Chabris was once the site of the ancient Bishop of Bourges ...

Indre Indre (; oc, Endre) is a landlocked department in central France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are known as the ''Indriens'' (masculine; ) and ''Indriennes'' (feminine; ). Indre is part of the current administ ...

, France, and was the son-in-law of Paul Vidal de la Blache. In 1892, he entered the École Normale Supérieure. He graduated three years later with a degree in history and geography. After that, he worked with

Ferdinand von Richthofen Baron Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen (5 May 18336 October 1905), better known in English as was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He is noted for coining the terms "Seidenstraße" and "Seidenstraßen" = "Silk Road(s)" or "Silk ...

and Albrecht Penck.

Career

In 1899, de Martonne became a professor at the University of Rennes. There he founded the institute of geography on the German model. In October 1905 he moved to the University of Lyon, replaced at Rennes by

Antoine Vacher Antoine Vacher (18 November 1873 – 16 September 1920) was a French geographer, mainly interested in physical geography, and particularly in hydrography. Early years (1873–1905) Antoine Vacher was the brilliant son of a family of tailors from ...

. Four years later he moved to the Sorbonne. During World War I (1914–18), in January 1915 the Geographical Commission was established in close liaison with the 2nd Bureau of the Army Staff with six geographers, Albert Demangeon,

Lucien Gallois Lucien Louis Joseph Gallois (21 February 1857 – 21 March 1941) was a French geographer born in Metz. He was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he took classes from Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918). In 1884 he rece ...

, Emmanuel de Martonne, Emmanuel de Margerie, Louis Raveneau and Paul Vidal de La Blache. During the

after the war, de Martonne was an adviser of Minister of Foreign Affairs

André Tardieu André Pierre Gabriel Amédée Tardieu (; 22 September 1876 – 15 September 1945) was three times Prime Minister of France (3 November 1929 – 17 February 1930; 2 March – 4 December 1930; 20 February – 10 May 1932) and a dominant figure of F ...

and Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He also lobbied for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to the French. De Martonne was also secretary of the ''Comité D'études'', which worked on fixing boundary issues following the war, especially in Romania and the Balkans. He was familiar with Central Europe and Romania, as he had conducted studies in the Southern Carpathians earlier in his life. After that, he taught at the

University of Cluj A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in 1921. He died on 24 July 1955 in Sceaux, a commune near Paris.

Awards and honors

He became an honorary member of the

Geographical Society of the USSR The Russian Geographical Society (russian: Ру́сское географи́ческое о́бщество «РГО»), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection ...

in 1933., and, from 1938 to 1952, was president of the International Geographical Union. He was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal in 1939, and the Victoria Medal in 1950. He became a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

in 1942.

Publications

In 1909, he published the first edition of his book ''Traité de géographie physique: Climat, Hydrographie, Relief du sol, Biogéographie''. It contains 396 three-dimensional, painstakingly researched illustrations and maps. It covers many aspects of geography, including different map projections, the

geographic coordinate system The geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or ellipsoidal coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on the Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various ...

, physical geography, climate, hydrography, erosion, glaciers, and

biogeography Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...

. The second edition was published in 1913, and the third in 1920. He published ''Les Alpes: Géographie générale'', a study about the Alps, in 1926. This led to the "De Martonne aridity index". In his work ''Problème des régions arides Sud-Américaines'' De Martonne was the first to coin and the define the South American Arid Diagonal.

References

Sources

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Martonne, Emmanuel de 1873 births 1955 deaths French geographers Members of the French Academy of Sciences People from Indre Presidents of the International Geographical Union Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal French climatologists Victoria Medal recipients