Background
Isaiah Bowman was born on the 26th of December in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Bowman was the third of eight children of Samuel Cressman Bowman, a farmer of moderate means, whose father had been a schoolteacher and farmer.
Isaiah Bowman was born on the 26th of December in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Bowman was the third of eight children of Samuel Cressman Bowman, a farmer of moderate means, whose father had been a schoolteacher and farmer.
Bowman began teaching in country schools at the age of seventeen, continuing his own education during the summers. He attended Ferris Institute at Big Rapids, Michigan, and later the State Normal School at Ypsilanti, where he was inspired by Mark Jefferson’s approach to general geographical problems through physical geography.
He served as an instructor in the geology department at Yale until he earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from that university in 1909.
Bowman taught at Yale University from 1905 to 1915. His Forest Physiography (1911), the first comprehensive work published on American physiographic divisions, and extensive field studies in the Andes mountains (1907, 1911, 1913) established him professionally.
As director of the American Geographical Society (1915–35), he enlarged both the membership and the staff and launched a 25-year project to map the American continents south of the United States. Studies of pioneer settlements and polar geography were but two of the many other programs he fostered. Bowman served as president of Johns Hopkins University from 1935 to 1948; under his administration, departments of geography, oceanography, and aeronautics were established at Johns Hopkins.
A territorial adviser to President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference (1918–19), Bowman also was frequently consulted by President Franklin Roosevelt on matters of scientific and national policy. The best-known of Bowman’s many writings is The New World: Problems in Political Geography (4th ed., 1928).
Bowman became director of the American Geographical Society in 1915, he encouraged other studies on South America and initiated the very important project to map Hispanic America on a scale of 1:1, 000, 000 to meet the standards of the International Millionth Map. He also became President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935-1948.
In 1941 he was awarded the British Royal Geographical Society's Patron's Gold Medal for his travels in South America and his services to Geography.
Bowman was a known anti-Semite, extremely suspect of Jews and reluctant to hire them at the Johns Hopkins University.
