The Map Room

The Escanaba Daily Press reports the death of John Patrick “Pat” Farrell, a former head of the geography department at Northern Michigan University who, in his retirement, ran Maps North, a map store in Marquette, Michigan, with his son.

Via MapHist, news of the passing on Thursday of Bernard V. Gutsell (1914-2010), who founded the journal Cartographica in 1965.

Via MapHist, news of the death of Jenkins Garrett, a Fort Worth, Texas, lawyer and philanthropist, at the age of 95. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram obituary makes no mention of it, but Garrett was a map enthusiast and founding president of the Texas Map Society.

The University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning reports the death last month of geography professor William G. Dean: “Bill will be best known to University of Toronto geography students, where he taught for over 30 years, and to the numerous participants in the two major atlas projects he led to outstanding success, the Economic Atlas of Ontario (1969) and the Historical Atlas of Canada (3 vols., 1987, 1990, 1993 and the Concise Historical Atlas of Canada, 1998). He was also editor (1960 to 1967) of the Canadian Geographer during its formative years.” Via MapHist.

Previously: Historical Atlas of Canada.

The New York Times: “Mary Meader, who as a spunky new bride in the 1930s took off on a 35,000-mile journey to advance geographic knowledge by making unprecedented aerial photographs of South America and Africa, died Sunday in Kalamazoo, Mich. She was 91.” Via MAPS-L.

More obituaries of John Bartholomew, who died last month, from the Guardian, Independent and Times. Via MapHist….  •  Continue reading this entry.

John Bartholomew — who, along with his two brothers, was “the last generation of the Edinburgh cartographic family to run the business of John Bartholomew & Son Ltd.” — has died aged 85, the Edinburgh Evening News reports. The Edinburgh-based…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The deaths of the following people associated with cartography were reported recently: Tom Devine (1927-2006) spent 32 years working as a cartographer for the USGS; he was a mountain climber and stereographic photographer in his off-hours. Via Maps-L. Bradford Washburn…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times Magazine’s year-end retrospective on deaths of notable people in 2006 includes a profile of Marie Tharp, the oceanographic cartographer who died earlier this year (see previous entry). David Tiley places her career struggles in context:…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Columbia University reports the death yesterday of Marie Tharp, an oceanographic cartographer who worked on the first world map of the ocean floor; she also co-discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge’s rift valley. She was 86. A pioneer of modern oceanography,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times reports the death on Monday of Caleb D. Hammond, Jr., who from 1948 to 1974 was president of C. S. Hammond & Company, the map publishing house founded by his grandfather. He was 90. You’ll recognize…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Earlier this month, MapHist subscribers learned of the passing of Walter W. Ristow, the former Chief of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. Ristow died aged 97 on April 3. Today’s Washington Post takes a look…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Karen Wynn Fonstad, the freelance cartographer who authored atlases of Middle-earth, Dragonlance and other fantasy worlds, died March 11 of complications from breast cancer. She was 59. This Toronto Sun article from 2002 reviews her best-known work, The Atlas of…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This past week the media reported the death of Arthur Robinson, whose eponymous projection was adopted by the National Geographic Society for its world maps. He died Oct. 10 at the age of 89. Obituaries from the Arizona Republic (reprinting…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last December, I reported on the massive History of Cartography Project, an expensive, comprehensive multivolume series, the first volume of which came out in 1987. The project was founded by J. B. Harley and David Woodward. Harley died in 1991….  •  Continue reading this entry.