Gottman, Jean-Iona

▪ 1995

      French geographer (b. Oct. 10, 1915, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire—d. Feb. 28, 1994, Oxford, England), introduced the concept and term megalopolis (from an ancient Greek concept) to describe a densely populated social and economic entity encompassing two or more cities and the increasingly urbanized space between them. After a four-year study of the region stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C., Gottman published Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States (1961), in which he concluded that this fusion of cities "was the cradle of a new order in the organization of inhabited space." Gottman was reared by relatives in Paris after his Ukrainian-Jewish parents were killed in 1917. He was at the Sorbonne as a student (1934-37) and researcher (1937-41), but he was forced out during the World War II German occupation of France. In 1941 he moved to the U.S., where he was a government consultant (1942-44), an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. (1943-48), and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. (1942-65). He later taught at the University of Paris (1948-56), served as director of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (1960-84), and eventually settled at the University of Oxford as professor of geography (1968-83), professor emeritus (1983-94), and fellow of Hertford College (1968-94). Gottman's other books include Virginia at Mid-Century (1955) and Megalopolis Revisited (1987).

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