David Lowenthal

David Lowenthal (born 1923) is an American historian and geographer. He is renowned for his work on heritage and spatial concepts of the past and future. He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London.^[1]

Biography

Lowenthal earned his PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Prior to this he graduated with a B.S. in History from Harvard University in 1944 and an M.A. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950.^[2]

Contribution

Lowenthal is a specialist in the 19th-century North American philologist, geographer and environmentalist George Perkins Marsh, whose work laid the foundations of the environmental conservation movement in the United States.^[3] He has advised international heritage agencies and institutions, including UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the International Council of Museums, ICCROM, the Getty Conservation Institute, the World Monuments Fund, the Council of Europe, Europa Nostra, English Heritage, the U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Trust of Australia, and the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage.^[2]

His historical analysis of the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives, The Past is a Foreign Country (1985), is widely considered to be a classic text.^[4][5] A revised edition, The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited appeared in 2015.^[6] Other key texts of his in the field of historical geography include The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996), George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation (2000) and Passage du Temps sur le Paysage' (2008).^[7]

Recognition

Lowenthal has been awarded several medals by institutions around the world. These include:

• The Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, awarded in 1997 "for conspicuous merit in research in geography".^[8]
• The Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society , awarded in 1999 for “geographical discoveries, or in the advancement of geographical science”.^[9]
• The Scottish Geographical Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, awarded in 2004 for “conspicuous merit and a performance of world-wide repute”.^[10]
• In 2016 (at the age of 93) he received a British Academy medal for The Past Is a Foreign Country—Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2015). The medal honors ‘a landmark academic achievement which has transformed understanding in the humanities and social sciences’ in a book that explores ‘the manifold ways in which history engages, illuminates and deceives us in the here and now’.^[11]

In 1965, Lowenthal received a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[12] He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001,^[7] received an Honorary Doctorate from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2008^[13] and was awarded the Forbes Lecture Prize by the International Institute for Conservation in 2010.^[2][14]

Further reading

• Gold, J.-R. (2009). "Lowenthal, D.". In Kitchin, Rob; Thrift, Nigel. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier. pp. 298–299. doi:10.1016/B978-008044910-4.00627-1. ISBN 978-0-08-044910-4. 

References