In Memory of David Woodward and Arthur Robinson

David Woodward

This year’s Nebenzahl Lectures acquired a special poignancy because six weeks earlier David Woodward had died at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Woodward was hired to fill the newly created position of Curator of Maps at Newberry Library in 1969 when he was still completing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. He became the first Director of the Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography in 1972. He retained that post until he returned to Madison to teach cartography in 1980. He retired from his teaching post in 2002, but he remained as busy as ever until his death.

David’s contributions to the Newberry and to the field of the history of cartography defy attempts to summarize them. Under his guidance the Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography became the prestigious international event it is today. He organized the Newberry’s first history of cartography summer institutes, inaugurated our program of research fellowships in the history of cartography, and launched the Chicago Map Society, the first society dedicated to map appreciation anywhere in the world.

Dr. Woodward established his worldwide reputation through his innovative studies of the history of map production and distribution, which were well supported by the Newberry’s collections, particularly the Novacco Collection of early Italian printed maps. Later, he pursued studies of the artistic and social aspects of map making and map use, but his interests were unlimited. He was equally at home writing about medieval world maps as he was with nineteenth-century wax-engraved maps. Moreover, while the academic world knew him primarily as a historian of cartography, he might easily have made a living as a fine arts printer, a professional cartographer, or as a librarian.

The broad scope of his interests served David well in the pursuit of the publication project that will be his most enduring legacy, the massive multi-volume History of Cartography published by the University of Chicago Press. The publication of any edited work asks a great deal of scholar—fortitude, tact, administrative skill, not to mention extensive knowledge of the field in question and of the people in it and of peoples outside the field who might be drawn into the enterprise. David possessed these qualities in abundance, and the four parts of the History that have appeared so far attest to it.

David occasionally told the story of how he and his friend Brian Harley conceived the project in 1977 on a walk near Brian’s home in Devonshire, how the original was supposed to be only four volumes covering the entirety of cartographic history to 1900, and how the entire work was supposed to consume no more than ten years of their lives. Characteristically, in a recent article reflecting on that walk and its consequences, David included an illustration of an Ordnance Survey map showing the location of that almost legendary walk. Twenty-seven years later, four volumes have appeared (three disguised as books 1, 2, and 3 of volume 2, but each larger than volume 1) and four more are either contemplated or in varying stages of completion. As the first volume, on the cartography of ancient and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, was making its way to press in the 1980s, David and Brian wrestled with the question of how the structure of the project should treat pre-modern Asian and Islamic cartography, and the traditional mapping by Africans, Native Americans, and Australasians, which were so woefully ignored by cartographic historians in the past. David’s view, that these neglected histories of cartographies deserved autonomous treatment, won the day, and over the course of the 1990s yielded the three books of “volume 2.” It also became apparent early on that a volume on twentieth-century cartography, another much neglected topic, was needed.

To put it simply, the shape and character of the recent study of the history of cartography is largely the work of David Woodward. His students at Madison include several of the contemporary leaders in the field, and his Newberry programs influenced the careers of countless others. To his colleagues he was a willing and generous collaborator; to his students a dedicated and supremely competent teacher. Above all David was an extrordinarly kind and modest man—always free with his advice and hospitality and never one to brag about his accomplishments, which indeed were very great. David was the kind of academic all of us aspire to be—erudite, energetic, eclectic in his interests yet single-minded in his goals, generous with advice and encouragement. All of us who entered the field of the history of cartography after him regard him as our mentor, and he will be sorely missed.

– Jim Akerman, The Newberry Library

James Akerman has written a full and affectionate remembrance of David Woodward. But I would not like this issue to go to press without adding my own tribute. I first met David in 1980, when he had decided to go to Madison, and the Newberry was casting about for somebody to succeed him. Bill Towner, then President of the Library, was taking me around the Library, and we called on David, in his office on the ground floor, where the readers’ lounge now is. His door was shut, but Bill brusquely knocked and went in, just in time to see the last of a sandwich disappearing into David’s desk drawer.

Eating in one’s office was strongly discouraged, but Bill clearly knew when discretion was the better part of valor, and David was happy enough to pretend that all was in order. That first encounter impressed on me one of his most remarkable characteristics, what the French call puissance de travail (does this term exist in English? It should). One has only to look at his list of publications, to see that where he saw an interesting theme, he could not resist pursuing it. Sometimes nobody else was doing so, though sometimes they were; David thus ventured into areas like medieval European mapmaking, where angels might well fear to tread. But the results were always remarkable, thanks to his perceptive industry.

Once he and Brian had been inspired to undertake their life’s work, David showed that he was as skillful as an entrepreneur and manager as he was as a scholar. Remarkable amounts of money were found for a huge enterprise, and there never seemed to be a shortage of clever young people to join him in Science Hall. Once there, they seemed to be infected with David’s enthusiasm and drive. One of my most extraordinary memories is the way in which, during over twenty years, my frequent telephone calls to Madison—generally seeking advice—always encountered a human voice. Often it was David’s own, but if not, it was always somebody helpful, even if his or her best message was that David was “in the observatory.” I have never understood what this message quite meant, but it was almost always true. The last time that I heard him was when he was mortally ill, though I did not know it. Nor would I have guessed it from his demeanor, calm and helpful as ever.

His ability to surround himself with enthusiastic collaborators was a rare gift. At international conferences, it was sometimes hard to talk to him and to his wife Roz among the throng of people seeking advice; perhaps it was advisable to wait until he—and for many years Brian—had settled after the day’s work into some congenial watering-hole. To realize that they have both gone is an almost intolerable thought, tempered only by the understanding that they built so well that their work will long live on. – David Buisseret, University of Texas-Arlington

Arthur Robinson

The renowned cartographer Arthur H. Robinson died at the age of 89 on October 10 in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Robinson was among the most innovative and influential mapmakers of the twentieth century, best known to the general public for his “Robinson Projection,” an elliptical projection he developed in 1963 for general use in textbooks and popular world maps. The National Geographic Society adopted the Robinson Projection as the official projection of its world maps with much fanfare in 1988 (see Mapline no. 52). Several generations of students know Dr. Robinson as the original author of Elements of Cartography, the widely used textbook for elementary cartography courses at the collegiate and graduate level, which was first published in 1953. The sixth edition of Elements of Cartography (with five co-authors) was published in 1995 and is still in print. A more diminutive book entitled The Look of Maps, published in 1952, is highly regarded within the cartographic community as a manifesto of sorts, calling for a more rigorous and scientific approach to map compilation and design on the eve of the wave of quantification, automation, and digitization that would revolutionize cartography during the last four decades of the century. Dr. Robinson is credited with profoundly influencing that revolution through his writing and his teaching; several of the most important figures in that recent cartographic revolution were his colleagues and students at Madison. With his former student Barbara Petchenik, he wrote a second manifesto in 1976, The Nature of Maps, which, among other things, emphasized the importance of the study of human perception and cognition to map research.

Dr. Robinson was deeply interested in the history of his profession as well. He served for many years on the advisory board of the Smith Center. His Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography (University of Chicago Press, 1982) is the definitive study of the early history of thematic mapping. Another book, Cartographical Innovations: An International Handbook of Mapping Terms to 1900 (co- authored by Helen Wallis and published by Map Collector Publications in 1987), has become a standard encyclopedic reference on the history of mapping methodologies, design, and content.

During World War II Robinson was Chief of the Map Division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), for which service he received the Legion of Merit. He began teaching at the University of Wisconsin in 1946 while he was still working on the Ph.D. he received in 1947. He retired in 1980, but he remained professionally active until recent illnesses slowed him.

Dr. Robinson’s fatal illness was a brief one; just one week before his death he was in attendance at a memorial service held in Madison to honor of one of his many accomplished students, David Woodward. David held the Arthur H. Robinson Chair in Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, established to honor Dr. Robinson’s many contributions to teaching and research in cartography. “Robbie,” as his friends and colleagues knew him, was a giant presence in his field for over six decades.

– Jim Akerman, The Newberry Library