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<br />(""iJ1Mrt F. WhU <br /> <br />serious attention to geography-than III :the United States. Maybe my <br />suppositions are wrong. <br /> <br />A: That was the case and that still is the case. I've lectured in the Moscow State <br />University where the geography faculty numbers 350. There's nothing like <br />it in the United States in terms of the ;imount of detail and sophistication of <br />specialization. <br /> <br />The European influence on Chicago was modest There was a much stronger <br />influence from American scholars. Edith Semple, who did historical <br />geography, had been a visiting professor there. In the days when I was an <br />undergraduate there was more interest in the work of Isaia.h Bowman and <br />Semple and the application of Frederick Jackson Turner's theories of <br />occupation of semi-arid areas than there was drawing from European <br />geography, although we all studied Humboldt and Ratzel and the other major <br />writers. <br /> <br />Q: So you took a BA in geography, or was it a BS? <br /> <br />A: It was a BS. And then an MS. <br /> <br />Q: Did you write a master's thesis for your MS? <br /> <br />A: Yes, I wrote a master's thesis on an English estuary, Humberside. The <br />reason for this was that there was an opportunity to do field work in England <br />in 1931 during the summer. I took that opportunity and used material from <br />it for a master's thesis which I completed in 1934, two years after my <br />bachelor's degree. At that time I also completed all of the formal <br />requirements for a Ph.D. so that I had only a doctor's dissertation to write. <br />I then knew I wanted to write it in the field of natural resources. This was <br />the spring of '34. Barrows had been appointed to the Mississippi Valley <br />Committee of the Public Works Administration, which was headed by <br />Secretary of the Interior Ickes, a Chicagoan who had known Barrows and <br />Merriam. Charles E. Merriam, a leading professor of political science, had <br />just been appointed to the new National Planning Board. Barrows said to me, <br />in effect, "We have a six-months' job at most, working on preparation of a <br />report of the Mississippi Valley Committee. Why don't you come to <br />Washington for a few weeks or a few months and lend a hand?" I gladly <br /> <br />5 <br />