Background
She was born on January 8, 1863 at Louisville, Kentucky, United States, the daughter of Andrew Bonner Semple and Emerin (Price) Semple.
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She was born on January 8, 1863 at Louisville, Kentucky, United States, the daughter of Andrew Bonner Semple and Emerin (Price) Semple.
Her early training was in private schools in Louisville. She entered Vassar at the age of fifteen, and received the B. A. degree with highest honors in 1882, thereafter continuing graduate work in history, her major field of interest. In 1891 and 1892 she went to Germany to study at the University of Leipzig under Friedrich Ratzel, the greatest anthropogeographer of his time.
She was Ratzel's first woman student, the only one in a group of about five hundred men. Although not allowed to matriculate, she was permitted to attend lectures by sitting in an adjoining room with the door ajar. She was considered one of Ratzel's most brilliant students and his influence turned her from history to geography as she began the many years of unrelenting study, investigation, and travel that made her a master in her field.
Her first publication, "The Influence of the Appalachian Barrier upon Colonial History, " appeared in the Journal of School Geography, February 1897. This was followed throughout her life by many others in both geographical and historical journals.
From 1906 to 1923 she was special lecturer in anthropogeography at the University of Chicago. When the School of Geography was founded at Clark University in 1921, she was the first to be called to the staff and she remained a member until her death. During these times she lectured widely both in the United States and Europe.
Her three works, ranking high as to subject matter and presentation, have become indispensable to the students of the field. American History and Its Geographic Conditions (1903) at once claimed and held wide attention, but Influences of Geographic Environment, published in 1911, with a second edition in 1927, was her magnum opus. Originally planned to be a simplified paraphrase or restatement of the principles embodied in Friedrich Ratzel's Anthropo-Geographie, her work resolved a formulation of principles based upon those of Ratzel and interpreted it for the Anglo-American mind. This book is said to "have shaped the whole trend and content of geographic thought in America, and laid the foundation for the science which has since made such rapid progress".
Her last book, The Geography of the Mediterranean Region (1931), was heroically completed after she had seen the "end of the Long Trail". It was the result of twenty years of research and field work in the Mediterranean and an exhaustive study of the older literature of the Mediterranean lands. Its historical content is even greater than that of her two earlier works.
She died at West Palm Beach, Florida.
Ellen Churchill Semple contributed significantly to the early development of the discipline of geography in the United States, as her most famous books (American History and its Geographic Conditions (1903), Influences of Geographic Environment (1911)), were widely-used textbooks for students of geography and history in the United States at the start of the 20th century In 1914 she was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal by the American Geographical Society in recognition of her work. She also was awarded the Helen Culver Gold Medal by the Geographic Society of Chicago, in recognition of her leadership in American Geography. Semple Elementary School in Semple's hometown of Louisville was named in her honor.
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Semple had a prevailing interest in environmental determinism, a theory that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture; however her later work emphasized environmental influences as opposed to the environment's deterministic effect on culture, reflecting broader academic discontent with environmental determinism after the First World War.
She had indefatigable capacities for research. In the classroom she seemed somewhat hampered, but her contacts with individual students were extraordinarily fruitful.
