Abstract
THE retirement of Prof. Eva G. R. Taylor from the University chair of geography at Birkbeck College, London, marks the departure from active academic life of one of the most vigorous personalities in geography. After graduating in natural sciences in London, she became personal assistant to Prof. A. J. Herbertson at Oxford at a time when he and his contemporaries—including Halford Mackinder and H. R. Mill—were laying the firm foundations of the modern concept of geography. A period of lecturing in London teachers' training colleges followed by ten years association (1921–31) with Prof. J. F. Unstead at Birkbeck College gave opportunities, both through lively teaching and lecturing and the well-known series of Unstead and Taylor text-books, for disseminating the new ideas in the minds of successive generations of prospective teachers. Prof. Taylor preferred always to work under her maiden name, but geographical work had to be combined in these years with the urgent needs of a young family; nevertheless she found time for a thoughtful little book on "Oceans and Rivers", and in her own textbooks developed the now universally familiar idea of the 'sketch-map'—more adequately described as a cartogram in which certain salient or related features are selected for diagrammatic representation on an outline map.
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University Chair of Geography: Birkbeck College: Prof. E. G. R. Taylor. Nature 153, 706 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153706b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153706b0