Sauer, Carl

Sauer, Carl (Ortwin)

(1889–1975) geographer; born in Warrenton, Mo. A Ph.D. graduate of the University of Chicago, he taught at the University of Michigan (1915–23), later joining the faculty of the University of California: Berkeley, where he spent the rest of his career. A competent linguist with a fine literary style, he published numerous scholarly monographs over the years, most notably Morphology of Landscape (1925), and a book of lectures, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952). He was largely responsible for shifting the focus of American geography from environmental "determinism" to the study of landscape and cultural geography.