GEOGRAPHERS from Germany

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Geographers of all time. This list of famous German Geographers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Geographers.

1. Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859)

With an HPI of 79.92, Alexander von Humboldt is the most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 97 different languages on wikipedia.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a non-Spanish European scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity, which introduced concepts of ecology leading to ideas of environmentalism. In 1800, and again in 1831, he described scientifically, on the basis of observations generated during his travels, local impacts of development causing human-induced climate change. Humboldt is seen as "the father of ecology" and "the father of environmentalism".

2. Carl Ritter (1779 - 1859)

With an HPI of 68.98, Carl Ritter is the 2nd most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

Carl Ritter (August 7, 1779 – September 28, 1859) was a German geographer. Along with Alexander von Humboldt, he is considered one of the founders of modern geography. From 1825 until his death, he occupied the first chair in geography at the University of Berlin.

3. Martin Waldseemüller (1470 - 1520)

With an HPI of 68.01, Martin Waldseemüller is the 3rd most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1470 – 16 March 1520) was a German cartographer and humanist scholar. Sometimes known by the Latinized form of his name, Hylacomylus, his work was influential among contemporary cartographers. His collaborator Matthias Ringmann and he are credited with the first recorded usage of the word America to name a portion of the New World in honour of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci in a world map they delineated in 1507. Waldseemüller was also the first to map South America as a continent separate from Asia, the first to produce a printed globe, and the first to create a printed wall map of Europe. A set of his maps printed as an appendix to the 1513 edition of Ptolemy's Geography is considered to be the first example of a modern atlas.

4. Sebastian Münster (1488 - 1552)

With an HPI of 59.33, Sebastian Münster is the 4th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 – 26 May 1552) was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, Cosmographia, sold well and went through 24 editions. Its influence was widely spread by a production of woodcuts created of it by a variety of artists.

5. Albrecht Penck (1858 - 1945)

With an HPI of 57.53, Albrecht Penck is the 5th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Albrecht Penck (25 September 1858 – 7 March 1945) was a German geographer and geologist and the father of Walther Penck.

6. Alfred Hettner (1859 - 1941)

With an HPI of 56.49, Alfred Hettner is the 6th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Alfred Hettner (6 August 1859, in Dresden – 31 August 1941, in Heidelberg) was a German geographer. His parents were art historian Hermann Theodor Hettner and Marie von Stockmar. His maternal grandfather was Christian Friedrich, Baron Stockmar. His half-brother was Otto Hettner. He is known for his concept of chorology, the study of places and regions, a concept that influenced both Carl O. Sauer and Richard Hartshorne. Apart from the geography of Europe, his fieldwork concentrated mainly on that of Colombia, Chile and Russia. Alfred Hettner, who obtained his PhD from the University of Strasbourg, was also a pupil of Ferdinand von Richthofen and Friedrich Ratzel at Leipzig—where he obtained his habilitation. His book Europe was published in 1907. According to him, geography is a chorological science or it is a study of regions. Hettner rejected the view that geography could be either general or regional. Geography, like other fields of learning, must deal in both unique things (regional geography) and with the universal (general geography), but the study of regions — especially in the form of his Länderkunde approach — is the main field of geography. Hettner supervised, among others, the PhDs of Martha Krug-Genthe, Oskar Schmieder, Friedrich Metz and Heinrich Schmitthenner. In 1895, he founded the journal Geographische Zeitschrift, which he also edited for many years. He was a lecturer briefly at Tübingen (1894-1897) and Leipzig (1897-1899). In 1899, he joined University of Heidelberg as an associate professor. By 1906, he became the first Chair of Geography at Heidelberg. He held this office until his retirement in 1928.

7. Johann Georg Gmelin (1709 - 1755)

With an HPI of 55.76, Johann Georg Gmelin is the 7th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Johann Georg Gmelin (8 August 1709 – 20 May 1755) was a German naturalist, botanist and geographer.

8. Hans Meyer (1858 - 1929)

With an HPI of 48.60, Hans Meyer is the 8th most famous German Geographer.  Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Hans Heinrich Josef Meyer (22 March 1858 – 5 July 1929) was a German geographer from Hildburghausen, who was the son of publisher Herrmann Julius Meyer (1826–1909). Hans Meyer is credited with being the first European to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at 5,895 m (19,341 ft) in modern day Moshi District of Kilimanjaro Region in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro has three peaks: Shira, 3,962 m (12,999 ft); Mawenzi, 5,149 m (16,893 ft); and Kibo, whose summit was reached by Meyer in 1889.

9. Adolf Stieler (1775 - 1836)

With an HPI of 48.52, Adolf Stieler is the 9th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Adolf Stieler (26 February 1775 – 13 March 1836) was a German cartographer and lawyer who worked most of his life in the Justus Perthes Geographical Institute in Gotha. Although he studied law and would serve in government for his entire career, he maintained an interest in cartography and published many famous works. His Handatlas was the leading German world atlas until the middle of the 20th century.

10. Anton Friedrich Büsching (1724 - 1793)

With an HPI of 47.88, Anton Friedrich Büsching is the 10th most famous German Geographer.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Anton Friedrich Büsching (27 September 1724 – 28 May 1793) was a German geographer, historian, educator and theologian. His Erdbeschreibung ("Earth description") was the first geographical work of any scientific merit. He also did significant work on behalf of education.