People

Co-editor of The Atlas of Britain and Northern Ireland and later director of the Experimental Cartography Unit. As chair of the IGU–ICA Joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases, he steered its work toward a digital world base map for environmental science.

He planned and scientifically directed the Atlas of the Republic of Austria (1960–1980), writing about its design and editorial practice and linking national-atlas making with regional research in Austria.

He edited Bengal in Maps before founding and becoming the first honorary director of India’s National Atlas Organisation in 1956, where he directed plans for the eight-volume National Atlas of India. He served as IGU President (1964–1968) and Vice-President (1968–1972).

Academic secretary and deputy director of the editorial office for China’s national atlas programme (1957–1965). He helped design the series as a whole and directed the first Physical Atlas of the People’s Republic of China, introducing new thematic map types and standardized compilation methods.

Editor of the National Atlas of the United States of America, responsible from 1963 for planning and organizing the federal project published in 1970. He also contributed to the IGU Commission on National Atlases working group on agricultural maps.

A leading innovator in terrain depiction, he developed a distinctive approach to relief shading that shaped generations of maps and atlases. He founded and led ETH Zurich’s Institute of Cartography (1925–1965), substantially revised the Swiss secondary-school atlas, and chaired the editorial commission for Switzerland’s national atlas. He was the ICA’s first president (1961–1964).

Editor-in-chief of the Atlas DDR (1976), he wrote on national-atlas methodology, the representation of developing countries in national and regional atlases, and thematic mapping in the Atlas DDR. He succeeded Salichtchev as chair of the IGU Commission on National and Regional Atlases (1972–1976), redirecting part of its programme toward environmental and urban atlases.

Editor-in-chief of the National Atlas of Poland and a member of the IGU Commission on National Atlases from its first term. He served as IGU Vice-President (1964–1968, 1972–1976) and President (1968–1972). With colleagues at the Polish Academy of Sciences, he compiled the Commission’s international bibliographies of national and regional atlases and the literature about them.

He headed Esselte’s cartographic division, overseeing atlas production. As an original member of the IGU Commission on National Atlases, he focused on national-atlas drawing and reproduction techniques. The 1956 Esselte Conference he convened helped pave the way for the ICA, where he served as vice-president from 1959 to 1964.

In 1952, he wrote an early survey of national atlases to inform plans for a new Atlas of Canada. He later directed Canada’s Geographical Branch, helped produce the Atlas of Canada, and represented Canada on the IGU Commission on National Atlases.

He led the wartime research for Atlas over Danmark. Much of the project material was destroyed in 1944, and only two volumes could be restored; the first appeared in 1949. He also reviewed national atlases from across Europe.

He modernized several editions of both the Grote and Kleine Bosatlas. A participant in the discussions that led to the ICA, he served as its Secretary-General and Treasurer (1964–1976) and president (1976–1984). In his 1968–1972 secretarial report, he called for closer cooperation between ICA and IGU commissions on national and regional atlas projects.

Atlas cartographer who worked on the Bosatlas and later helped develop the second Dutch National Atlas and the theory of electronic atlas information systems. He was documentalist of the IGU–ICA Joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases (1976–1984), then a founding board member of the ICA Commission on National Atlases in 1987. In later work, he examined the concept of national atlases and the history of the IGU and ICA commissions concerned with them.

He worked on the Atlas of Australian Resources from its first series in the 1950s through its third series in the 1980s. As the Australian corresponding member of the IGU Commission on National Atlases, he contributed to its working group developing recommendations for water-resource maps.

He edited the National Atlas of Hungary (1967) and led the IGU Commission on National Atlases working group that developed recommendations for the themes and legends of transport maps. As chair of the ICA Commission for Thematic Cartography, he contributed to the IGU–ICA joint work on environmental atlases. During World War II, he used his cartographic agency in Switzerland as cover for Soviet intelligence work against Nazi Germany.

Hungarian-born American cartographer whose hand-drawn physiographic method gave his atlases a distinctive graphic language. He co-authored Atlas de Cuba (1949), produced the Atlas of Florida (1964), and reviewed national atlases for the cartographic profession.

Author of the Geographical-Statistical Atlas of Poland (1916), which brought physical, demographic, economic, and political evidence together in a modern national atlas. He served as an IGU Vice-President in 1931–1938 and again after the Second World War (1945–1949). Its maps also informed the Polish delegation’s work at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

At Sweden’s National Land Survey, he took part in preparatory studies for the National Atlas of Sweden, focusing on digital production. He organized the 1986 national-atlas workshop that led to the ICA Commission on National Atlases and chaired the new commission from 1987 to 1995. He later served as ICA president (1999–2003).

He chaired the IGU Commission on National and Regional Atlases from its creation in 1956 until 1972, served as ICA vice-president from 1964 to 1968 and again from 1972 to 1976, and was ICA president from 1968 to 1972. He directed the cartographic preparation of the Great Soviet Atlas of the World (1936–1939), served on the editorial boards of major Soviet atlases, and guided the preparation of Atlas nationaux (1960) and its follow-up publications as guidance for national-atlas compilation.

In essays published in 1939 and 1941, she gave an early, clear account of the national atlas as a comprehensive and balanced portrayal of a country’s physical and human geography. She also advocated a National Atlas of Britain and, when The Atlas of Britain and Northern Ireland finally appeared, assessed it in “A welcome to the Atlas of Britain” (1963).

Contributor to the Atlas de Belgique, including plates on population, population density, forests, and foreign trade. As a corresponding member of the IGU Commission on National Atlases, he led the working group that developed recommendations for population maps.

Director of the first Atlas Nacional de España, whose first part appeared in 1965. He contributed to the IGU Commission on National Atlases working group developing recommendations for water-resource maps, then chaired the IGU–ICA Joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases from its establishment in 1976 until his death in 1982.

Map curator at the American Geographical Society who expanded and organized one of the major atlas collections of her time. Her National Atlases: A Summary (1957), Regional Atlases (1962), and World and Thematic Atlases (1962) systematically recorded mid-twentieth-century atlas production.

Through Telberg Book Corp., he supplied foreign maps and atlases to readers in the United States and published English-language keys to Soviet atlases, including Atlas Mira and Atlas Narodov Mira. He is perhaps better known as Val Telberg, a photographer celebrated for his surrealist photomontages.