This volume, no.43 in the Geographers series, brings together a collection of studies on individuals who have made major contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Telling the stories of geographers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from four countries and across two continents, it shows how these individuals advanced the cause of geography in sometimes unexpected ways.

From the heiress Louise Arner Boyd, who drained her inheritance to fund Arctic expeditions, to David Stoddart who saw geography as a direct descendant of the scientific explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Gerd Enequist, who struggled for human geography to be taken as seriously as physical geography, and for women to be taken as seriously as men, this volume lays out the major contribution these geographers made to their subject.

With two chapters focusing on women who carved out careers in the face of opposition, and a guest editorial by Felix Driver who considers the value of biography as a method for recapturing geography's history, this volume brings a welcome new perspective on the serial's core method and purpose.

Elizabeth Baigent is University Reader in the History of Geography at the University of Oxford, UK. She is Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Higher Education Academy.

André Reyes Novaes is an Associate Professor at Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil. He is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Geography at the Royal Holloway University of London, UK, and a member of the commission on the history of geography at the International Geographical Union.