Ellsworth Huntington

Ellsworth Huntington
Born	(1876-09-16)September 16, 1876 Galesburg, Illinois
Died
Nationality	American
Fields	Geography Climatology Human Ecology
Institutions	Yale University
Alma mater	Harvard University Yale University

Ellsworth Huntington (16 September 1876 – 17 October 1947) was a professor of geography at Yale University during the early 20th century, known for his studies on environmental determinism/climatic determinism, economic growth and economic geography.

Career overview

He served as President of the Ecological Society of America in 1917, the Association of American Geographers in 1923 and President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology from 1934 to 1938.

He taught at Euphrates College, Turkey (1897–1901); accompanied the Pumpelly (1903) and Barrett (1905–1906) 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 (1907–1915) and from 1917 was a research associate there, devoting his time chiefly to climatic and anthropogeographic studies. He was the 1916 recipient of the Elisha Kent Kane Gold Medal from the Geographical Society of Philadelphia.

In 1909, Huntington led the Yale Expedition to Palestine. It was his mission to determine "step by step the process by which geologic structure, topographic form, and the present and past nature of the climate have shaped man's progress, moulded his history; and thus played an incalculable part in the development of a system of thought which could scarcely have arisen under any other physical circumstances."

He was on the original standing committee of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles from 1941.

Major works

Ellsworth Huntington at the Mill Spring, California, tree ring study, 1911

• The Pulse of Asia: A Journey in Central Asia Illustrating the Geographic Basis of History (1907)
• Palestine and Its Transformation (1911)
• The Climatic Factor (1914)
• Civilization and Climate (1915; rev. ed. 1924)
• The Red Man's Continent: A Chronicle of Aboriginal America (1919)
• World-power and Evolution (1919)
• The Secret of the Big Trees: Yosemite Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (1921)
• Climatic Changes (with Stephen Sargent Visher, 1922)
• The Character Of Races (1924)
• West of the Pacific (1925)
• Human Habitat (1927)
• Principles of Human Geography (with S. W. Cushing; 5th ed., 1940)
• Mainsprings of Civilization (1945)

Selected publications

• "Changes of Climate and History," American Historical Review Vol. 19, No. 2 (Jan., 1913), pp. 213–232 in JSTOR
• "Climatic Change and Agricultural Exhaustion as Elements in the Fall of Rome," Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 31, No. 2 (Feb., 1917), pp. 173–208 in JSTOR
• "Agricultural Productivity and Pressure of Population," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 198, Present International Tensions (Jul., 1938), pp. 73–92 in JSTOR
• "The Geography of Human Productivity," Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1943), pp. 1–31 in JSTOR

See also

• Huntington family

External links

• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at Hathi Trust
• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at Unz.com
• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at JSTOR
• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at Harper's Magazine
• Works by Ellsworth Huntington at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Ellsworth Huntington papers held at Yale University