Eduard Imhof: talentvol en geleerd

Summary

In this memorial article, F.J. Ormeling Sr. reviews the career of Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof (1895–1986), covering his mountaineering and drawing, teaching at ETH Zürich, and atlas editorships. Imhof founded ETH’s Cartographic Institute in 1925 and advocated coordinating symbols, colour, lettering, and generalisation with map scale and user needs. He developed relief representation combining oblique hill shading, aerial-perspective hypsometric tints, contours, and rock drawing, refining these techniques through school atlases. His work on thematic cartography proposed classification by graphic structural types and received mixed professional responses. The National Atlas of Switzerland, completed under his direction in 1978, contained approximately 500 maps. Its graphic and educational presentation attracted praise, while critics noted limited synthesis and a lack of problem-oriented chapters. The article also recounts his role in establishing the International Cartographic Association and serving as its first president. Ormeling attributes Imhof’s achievements to his combination of scientific judgment, artistic talent, and technical proficiency, and urges that his design principles be passed on to practitioners entering the computer-mapping era.