Sauer, Carl (1889–1975)

Carl ortwin sauer was an influential American geographer and has been characterized as the father of cultural geography. He received his doctorate in Geography from the University of Chicago in 1915. Prior to this he worked as a geologist with the Illinois Geological Survey, a map editor for Rand McNally, and as a teacher in Massachusetts. Sauer developed a great appreciation for the work of the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache and others in France who espoused the importance of regions to geographical analysis.

Sauer contended that all regions have their unique landscapes that reflect the social processes and physical modifications within them over time. One of Sauer's most important writings is “The Morphology of Landscape,” in which he presents a model of the ...