Anne Buttimer <i>31 October 1938 ‐ 15 July 2017</i>

Credit to the School of Geography, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland Anne Buttimer died in Dublin on 15 July at the age of 78. She was a truly global figure and one of the most inspiring and influential geographers of her generation, who worked tirelessly to promote dialogue among scholars, planners and citizens around the world. Professor Buttimer was president of the International Geographical Union (2000–04), the first woman to hold that post. She served on the council of the Royal Geographical Society (1996–99), receiving the Murchison Award in 1997. A former council member of the Association of American Geographers (1974–77), she received its Honours Award (1986) and Lifetime Achievement Honours (2014). The Wahlberg gold medal was awarded to her by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography in 2009. A long-serving fellow of the Academia Europaea, Anne Buttimer was elected its vice-president in 2012. Two years later, she received the Prix Vautrin-Lud, widely recognised as the ‘Nobel Prize’ in geography. Anne Buttimer was born on 31 October 1938 into a farming family in County Cork, Ireland. Her father, Jeremiah, was active in the cooperative movement. From him she acquired an integrated view of the environment and a steely will to get things done. Anne excelled at school and showed real ability with languages. She studied geography, mathematics and Latin at the University of Cork. After her first degree (1957), she spent a year as a schoolteacher and researched her MA in geography, also at the University of Cork. Like her older sister, she became a nun in the Dominican Order and followed her to the United States. The Order's tradition of contemplata aliis tradere (sharing the fruits of one's own contemplation) shaped her career. Anne obtained a teaching certificate at Seattle and, as an extraordinarily promising student, was placed with a team of Catholic educators working on an integrated curriculum for training teachers in Church schools. She was given specific responsibility for developing instruction in social geography. She was encouraged to acquire a doctorate and enrolled at the University of Washington (Seattle), whose geographers were driving the quantitative revolution. Anne became fully exposed to statistical methodology but her preference was for humanistic social geography. With support from Morgan Thomas and especially from Marvin Mikesell, a visiting professor, she investigated the notion of genre de vie (way of life) in French geographical writing. The concept embraced beliefs, organisation of activities, space and time, as well as the ecological resource base. Anne completed her thesis in 1965 and then spent a year in Belgium and France enhancing her grasp of philosophy and expanding her thesis for publication as ‘Society and milieu in the French geographic tradition’ (1971). The Order then arranged for her to work with a research team at the University of Glasgow (1968–70), where she investigated the social space of working-class families relocated from slums to municipally built housing estates, drawing in part on her quantitative training. In 1970, Anne moved to Clark University in Massachusetts where she taught graduate students and participated in pioneering seminars on environmental perception. Her work on Glasgow received critical scrutiny and stimulated her to promote the importance of environmental experience in geographical enquiry. A conference at Budapest in 1971 introduced her to Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand (Lund) who was very interested in her work. The Commission on College Geography in the USA requested her to draft a paper on values in geography, which led to an invitation to visit Lund in 1973. Anne felt that Hägerstrand's ‘time-geography’ was too narrow in approach and should incorporate environmental experience as well as clock-calendar time. A return visit to Lund in 1976 gave rise to a project on knowledge and experience. Anne's mother, Eileen, died in that year after blessing her daughter's decision to leave the Dominican Order. Anne felt that a new vocation was arising: to build an international community of scholars, where self and mutual understanding could be springboards for better communication between scientists and the wider public. A research fellowship (1977–79 and 1982–88) enabled her to work at Lund University with Hägerstrand on the International Dialogues Project that involved interviewing 300 scientists from three dozen countries. As part of this wide-ranging project over 50 video interviews with well known geographers were recorded and later digitised, many of them involving Anne as interviewer. These may be viewed on the IGU YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WzSi02jYP3QgjseHxKB3g). In 1979, Anne married Professor Bertram Broberg, a distinguished engineer and mathematician at Lund. In 1988, Anne's Swedish fellowship came to an end and she accepted a chair at the University of Ottawa. Collaborating with colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, she investigated the use of forest land in Canada and Sweden. Among her influential publications were The practice of geography (1983), Geographers of Norden (with T. Hägerstrand, 1988), Geography and the human spirit (1993) and By northern lights (with T. Mels, 2006). Some of her work has been translated into various European languages. In 1991 Anne Buttimer returned to Ireland as professorial head of geography at University College Dublin, occupying that post until 2003 when she became professor emerita. She made innovations in the teaching curriculum, accentuated the department's research profile, and directed two European projects on ‘Landscape and life: appropriate scales for sustainable development’ and ‘Environment and development on the periphery of Europe’. Both investigations sought to enhance understanding among academic researchers, planners and citizens. On 3 May 2004, Anne suffered the loss of her mentor Torsten Hägerstrand, and then of her husband precisely one year later. Her presidency of the IGU had ended and she felt a great emptiness in everyday life. Summoning her inner strength, she became busier than ever, with new writing projects, overseas conferences and invited lectures, and vice-presidency of the Academia Europaea. Her long involvement with the IGU Commission on the History of Geographical Thought was expressed through biobibliographical essays on Hägerstrand, Edgar Kant and Alexander von Humboldt. Awards, medals and honorary doctorates were bestowed upon her. Professor Anne Buttimer died of cancer on 15 July 2017. Following a requiem mass in Dublin, this geographer-heroine was laid to rest at Ardnageehy cemetery in County Cork, alongside her beloved Bertram.

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