An April 10 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Inventing the Science of Geographic Information Puts a Professor on the Map” by Tushar Rae features UCSB Geography’s Mike Goodchild. It begins by stating: “To say that Michael Goodchild, a professor of geography and the first appointee to the newly created Jack and Laura Dangermond endowed chair at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is well liked by his students would be an understatement. Dar Roberts, chair of the department of geography at Santa Barbara, says student evaluations of Mr. Goodchild often contain phrases such as ‘Give this guy a raise!’ and ‘This guy rocks my socks.’ It’s a sentiment that Jack Dangermond, founder of Environmental Systems Research Institute and donor for the endowed chair in geography, can understand. He says Mr. Goodchild, whom he has known since the middle of the 1970s, ‘nurtures and encourages good students, people who are passionate about the stuff—he is really good with them. But he is nobody’s fool.’”
The article goes on to describe Mike’s seminal 1992 paper that led to the creation of geographic information science, how his passion for spelunking led him from the study of Physics at the University of Cambridge in the UK to the study of Geography at McMaster University in Canada, and his eventual transition to the Department of Geography at UCSB where he is currently becoming a leader in “neogeography,” also referred to as volunteered geographic information. The Chronicle is the major news service in the U.S. academic world, and it’s appropriate, to put it mildly, that it should feature the “father of geographic information science.”
Editor’s note: Thanks to Beilei Zhang, our MSO, for bringing this material to our attention.
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