Nachruf für Prof. Dr. h.c. Eduard Imhof

Summary

Eduard Imhof, professor of cartography at ETH Zurich, died on 27 April 1986 in Erlenbach on Lake Zurich at the age of 91. This obituary reviews his life and work. Born in 1895 in Schiers in the Prättigau and raised in Zurich from age seven, he remained closely tied to the mountains as an alpinist, topographic surveyor, watercolourist and cartographer. He received his ETH diploma in 1919 and became associate professor of plan and map drawing and topography in 1925. A win in a cantonal school-map competition in 1920 launched some sixty years of map production, yielding about 50 relief maps, hand maps and wall maps. From 1955 he extended relief shading to small-scale atlas maps and set out the method in Kartographische Geländedarstellung (1965). Chief editor of the two Swiss school atlases from 1928, he taught international university courses in 1957 and 1960, was a founding member and first president (1961–1964) of the International Cartographic Association, and received the Carl Mannerfelt Medal in 1980. Appointed by the Federal Council in 1961 as chief editor of the Atlas der Schweiz, published in nine instalments between 1965 and 1978 with over 400 maps, he drew on this experience in Thematische Kartographie (1972). He taught at ETH Zurich for 47 years, became full professor in 1949, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich the same year, and remained active for more than two decades after his retirement in 1965.