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American Geographical Society

Obituary: Sten de GeerAuthor(s): John LeighlySource: Geographical Review, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct., 1933), pp. 685-686Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/209252 .

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Page 2: Obituary: Sten de Geer

GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD

with doubling periods for the production rate varying between a minimum of 8.6 years for petroleum (which alone is characterized by more rapid rate increase than copper) and a maximum of 20.I years for tin. The effects of retardation due to the World War are reflected in these trends, with normal growth resumed during the years 1923 to 1929 and further interruption during the present production crisis.

How long are these rapid rates of increase in production to continue? Just as long as there is failure in neither demand nor supply. Regarding demand, we have to consider the world market's capacity of absorption of raw materials to be in two dimensions-the one geographical or lateral, as the western economic and industrial system is carried to the less advanced continents; the other vertical, as new require- ments come from countries already possessing high economic development. Satura- tion of such a market would not appear possible in the present era. As regards supply the case is different-no such positive statement can be made to cover all metals. Here we see a tendency toward depletion for those metals that man has had to follow to remote regions, although thus far only in the case of gold has production been influenced by limited world resources. Our Chilean and African deposits of copper appear enormous at the moment. Electric prospecting methods may well be de- pended upon to increase the estimated one hundred million tons of known copper reserves to five hundred million tons, a figure based upon possible concentration of ore throughout the world's land area in the same proportion per square unit as the total exhausted and known remaining deposits of Europe and the United States, with liberal allowances for future discoveries. Fabulous supplies indeed-but even these would be exhausted in fifty years if copper production were to continue to grow at its characteristic rate! W.E. RUDOLPH

OBITUARY

Sten De Geer. Baron Sten De Geer, professor of geography in the University of Goteborg, died on June 2, 1933, at the age of 47. He had occupied the chair at Goteborg for only four years; most of the writings that won for him a unique place in the geographic science of the twentieth century were done between 1912 and the end of I928, while he was connected with the academic institutions of his native Stockholm.

At the focus of Sten De Geer's methodology the map occupied an unquestioned first place, not only as an illustrative adjunct to verbal exposition but also and chiefly as an instrument of research, with the aid of which heterogeneous masses of factual data were displayed areally and by their groupings disclosed mutual relations and inter- dependence. The importance of the map in his scientific labors became evident early in his career. The most significant part of his doctoral dissertation, "Klarailfvens serpentinlopp och flodplan" (Sveriges Geol. Undersokning, Ser. C, No. 236 (Arsbok, I9IO, No. 8), Stockholm, 1911), is a large-scale map of permanent worth as a docu- mentation of the details of fluvial morphology. Other geomorphological contributions from the same period, e.g. "Niplandskap vid Dalalfven" (Sveriges Geol. Under- sokning, Ser. C, No. 252, 1914), are built about similarly detailed maps.

His anthropogeographical work, which in time became his principal concern, began concurrently with his youthful studies in physical geography. The map and com- mentary " Befolkningens f6rdelning pa Gottland" ( Ymer, Vol. 28, I908, pp. 240-253), incorporated his first use of the "absolute" method of representing distribution of population that culminated in his best-known monument, the magnificent "Karta 6ver befolkningens f6rdelning i Sverige," with accompanying text (Stockholm, 1919), which he described in the Geographical Review for January, 1922. Functional analysis of urban areas in his study of the towns about the Baltic, "Storstaderna vid Oster- sjon" ( Ymer, Vol. 32, 1912, pp. 41-87), introduced a phase of regional investigation to which he repeatedly returned: "Storstaden Stockholm ur geografisk synpunkt"

with doubling periods for the production rate varying between a minimum of 8.6 years for petroleum (which alone is characterized by more rapid rate increase than copper) and a maximum of 20.I years for tin. The effects of retardation due to the World War are reflected in these trends, with normal growth resumed during the years 1923 to 1929 and further interruption during the present production crisis.

How long are these rapid rates of increase in production to continue? Just as long as there is failure in neither demand nor supply. Regarding demand, we have to consider the world market's capacity of absorption of raw materials to be in two dimensions-the one geographical or lateral, as the western economic and industrial system is carried to the less advanced continents; the other vertical, as new require- ments come from countries already possessing high economic development. Satura- tion of such a market would not appear possible in the present era. As regards supply the case is different-no such positive statement can be made to cover all metals. Here we see a tendency toward depletion for those metals that man has had to follow to remote regions, although thus far only in the case of gold has production been influenced by limited world resources. Our Chilean and African deposits of copper appear enormous at the moment. Electric prospecting methods may well be de- pended upon to increase the estimated one hundred million tons of known copper reserves to five hundred million tons, a figure based upon possible concentration of ore throughout the world's land area in the same proportion per square unit as the total exhausted and known remaining deposits of Europe and the United States, with liberal allowances for future discoveries. Fabulous supplies indeed-but even these would be exhausted in fifty years if copper production were to continue to grow at its characteristic rate! W.E. RUDOLPH

OBITUARY

Sten De Geer. Baron Sten De Geer, professor of geography in the University of Goteborg, died on June 2, 1933, at the age of 47. He had occupied the chair at Goteborg for only four years; most of the writings that won for him a unique place in the geographic science of the twentieth century were done between 1912 and the end of I928, while he was connected with the academic institutions of his native Stockholm.

At the focus of Sten De Geer's methodology the map occupied an unquestioned first place, not only as an illustrative adjunct to verbal exposition but also and chiefly as an instrument of research, with the aid of which heterogeneous masses of factual data were displayed areally and by their groupings disclosed mutual relations and inter- dependence. The importance of the map in his scientific labors became evident early in his career. The most significant part of his doctoral dissertation, "Klarailfvens serpentinlopp och flodplan" (Sveriges Geol. Undersokning, Ser. C, No. 236 (Arsbok, I9IO, No. 8), Stockholm, 1911), is a large-scale map of permanent worth as a docu- mentation of the details of fluvial morphology. Other geomorphological contributions from the same period, e.g. "Niplandskap vid Dalalfven" (Sveriges Geol. Under- sokning, Ser. C, No. 252, 1914), are built about similarly detailed maps.

His anthropogeographical work, which in time became his principal concern, began concurrently with his youthful studies in physical geography. The map and com- mentary " Befolkningens f6rdelning pa Gottland" ( Ymer, Vol. 28, I908, pp. 240-253), incorporated his first use of the "absolute" method of representing distribution of population that culminated in his best-known monument, the magnificent "Karta 6ver befolkningens f6rdelning i Sverige," with accompanying text (Stockholm, 1919), which he described in the Geographical Review for January, 1922. Functional analysis of urban areas in his study of the towns about the Baltic, "Storstaderna vid Oster- sjon" ( Ymer, Vol. 32, 1912, pp. 41-87), introduced a phase of regional investigation to which he repeatedly returned: "Storstaden Stockholm ur geografisk synpunkt"

685 685

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Page 3: Obituary: Sten de Geer

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

(Svenska Turistforeningens Arsskrift, 1922, pp. 155-168) is well known to American readers in its English translation, "Greater Stockholm: A Geographical Inter- pretation" (Geogr. Rev., Vol. 13, 1923, pp. 497-506). Later essays of the same type include studies of Falun and Gavle (1924) and one in which sentimental ties brought De Geer back to Gottland and its ancient metropolis, "Den nutida staden Visby" (Globen, Vol. 7, 1928, pp. 29-38).

The ripest fruits of De Geer's scholarship are those studies in which he attempted the difficult task of regional synthesis. Here as elsewhere the map served as both tool and record. Besides shorter essays, a series of writings from the years 1926 to 1928 occupies a place of honor in the literature of geographic synthesis and deserves close study as an example of method: "The Kernel Area of the Nordic Race within Northern Europe" (H. Lundborg and F. J. Linders: "The Racial Characters of the Swedish Nation," Uppsala, 1926, pp. 162-171), a methodologically admirable treatment of a none too grateful subject; "The American Manufacturing Belt"

(Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 9, 1927, pp. 233-359), abundant harvest of his visit to the United States in 1922; "Das geologische Fennoskandia und das geographische Baltoskandia" (Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 10, 1928, pp. 119-139), a penetrating distinction between an anthropogeographical and a geognostic province; and "The

Subtropical Belt of Old Empires" (Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 10, 1928, pp. 205-244), a venture into the political geography of the past. In all these, and in his inaugural address at G6teborg in February, 1929, "Amerikas industriregion" (Svensk Geogr. Arsbok, 1929, pp. 195-21I), the boundaries of anthropogeographical regions are identified through the comparison, on maps, of the distribution of diverse elements of nature and of culture. The same method guides the organization of material in "Manniskans och naringslivets geografi" (Stockholm, 1928).

When De Geer wrote, in the statement of his scientific credo, "On the Definition, Method and Classification of Geography" (Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 5, I923, PP. 1-37), that "the work of the brain and of the pencil are so much interwoven that a

great part of the sphere of method is common to both," he was accurately describing his own procedure. He had always a supply of outline maps at hand and used them

constantly for jotting down new ideas as they came to him.

During the brief years of Sten De Geer's professorship at Goteborg he built up a

worthy center of geographic study. Outside his purely professorial activity, his efforts were signalized particularly by the rejuvenation of the local geographic society and by the establishment, in 1932, of the journal Gothia. In the first issue of the new journal he gave an account of the geographic work pursued in his institute and, in effect, issued an invitation to foreign, particularly English-speaking, students to come and make use of the facilities he had organized. At the beginning of a new

phase of his career, and one of exceptionally high promise, he has been untimely

686

taken away. JOHN LEIGHLY

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