Philippe Buache, was a French geographer, born in Paris in 1700. He died in 1773.

Buache was trained under the geographer Guillaume Delisle, of whom he married the daughter. Buache was nominated first geographer of the king in 1729. He established the division of the world by seas and river systems. He believed in a southern continent, an hypothesis which was confirmed by later discoveries.He published in 1754 an "Atlas physique" and wrote several pamphlets. He was a member of the Académie des sciences.

This 1753 map by Philippe Buache locates Fusang ("Fou-Sang des Chinois", "Fusang of the Chinese") north of the State of California.

Philippe Buache, Carte d'une partie de l'Océan vers l'Équateur entre les costes d'Afrique et d'Amérique... Paris, 1737. Map engraved on copper (63,5 x 48,3 cm)

Jacques Ancel (July 22, 1879—1943) was a French geographer and geopolitician. He is author of several books, including Peoples and Nations of Balkans: political geography (1926) and Geopolitics (1936).

After studying history and geography and professing as a teacher, Ancel was drafted to fight in World War I. Wounded three times, he was detached to the Headquarters of the French Army's Oriental Corps (fighting in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans). After the war, he helped mediate the tense relations between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. In 1930, Ancel obtained his doctorate with the thesis La Macédoine, étude de colonisation contemporaine ("Macedonia, a study in contemporary colonization").

He taught at the University of Paris' Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, and was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academyand of other scientific forums. He was a knight of the Légion d'honneur.

Works1901, Une page inédite de Saint-Simon1902, La Formation de la colonie du Congo Français (1843-1882), Paris, Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique Française1919, L'unité de la politique bulgare, 1870-1919, Editions Bossard1921, Les Travaux et les jours de l'Armée d'Orient. 1915-19181923, Manuel historique de la question d'Orient (1792-1923), Delagrave1926, Peuples et nations des Balkans (réédité par CTHS en 1992)1929, Histoire contemporaine depuis le milieu du XIXe siècle (avec la collaboration d'Henri Calvet). Manuel de politique européenne, histoire diplomatique de l'Europe (1871-1914), PUF1930, La Macédoine, étude de colonisation contemporaine1936, Géopolitique, Paris, Delagrave1938, Géographie des frontières, préface d'André Siegfried, Paris, Gallimard1940, Manuel Géographique de politique européenne. 2. L'Allemagne, Paris, Delagrave1945, Slaves et Germains, Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1945.

Élisée Reclus (March 15, 1830 – July 4, 1905), also known as Jean Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork over a period of nearly 20 years: La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes (1875 – 1894). In 1892 he was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for this work, despite his having been banished from France because of his political activism.

Reclus was born at Sainte-Foy-la-Grande (Gironde). He was the second son of a Protestantpastor and his wife. From the family of fourteen children, several, including his brother and fellow geographer Onésime Reclus, went on to achieve renown either as men of letters,politicians or members of the learned professions.Reclus began his education in Rhenish Prussia, and continued higher studies at the Protestant college of Montauban. He completed his studies at University of Berlin, where he followed a long course of geography under Karl Ritter.

Paul Vidal de la Blache (Pézenas,Hérault, 22 January 1845 - Tamaris-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, 5 April1918) was a French geographer. He is considered to be the founder of the modern French geography and also the founder of the French School of Geopolitics. He conceived the idea of genre de vie, which is the belief that the lifestyle of a particular region reflects the economic, social, ideological and psychological identities imprinted on the landscape.

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Vidal de la Blache was sent to boarding school at the Institution Favard at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. Afterward, he attended the École Normale Supérieure. Vidal de la Blache received his teaching certificate and then left France for Athens to attend Ecole Francaise d'Athens. There he studied Greek archeology for three years.

Upon returning to France, in 1870, he married Laure Marie Elizabeth and held several teaching positions at the Lycee d'Angers and at the Ecole Preparatoire de l'Enseignment Superieur des Lettres et des Sciences. La Blache received his doctorate in 1872 and began working at the Nancy-Université.

Vidal de la Blache returned to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1877 as a full Professor of Geography and taught there the next twenty-one years. He transferred to theUniversité de Paris, where he continued teaching until he retired in 1909 at the age of sixty-four.

Vidal de la Blache founded the École française de géographie ("French School of Geography") and, together with Lucien Gallois, the Annales de Géographie (1893), of which he was the editor until his death. The Annales de Géographie became an influential academic journal that promoted the concept of human geography as the study of man and his relationship to his environment.

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Vidal de la Blache produced a large number of publications; including 17 books, 107 articles, and 240 reports and reviews. Only some of these have been translated into English. His most influential works included an elementary textbook Collection de Cartes Murales Accomppagnees de Notices along with Histoire et Geographie: Atlas General and La France de l'Est. Two of his best-known writings areTableau de la Geographie de la France (1903) and Principles of Human Geography (1918).

Lucien Louis Joseph Gallois (1857-1941) was a French geographer who was a native of Metz.He was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he took classes from Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918). In 1884 he received his agrégation, and in 1893 became a lecturer at the Sorbonne. From 1898 to 1907 he was a professor of geography at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and afterwards a professor at the Sorbonne, where he remained until his retirement in 1927.

Gallois made major contributions to the Annales de géographie, a geographic magazine that was founded by his mentor, Paul Vidal de la Blache, and after the latters' death in 1918, he assumed directorship of Géographie universelle, a major project involving regional geography of the whole world.

Gallois had a keen interest involving the history of geography and cartography, as made evident by an influential 1890 study on German geographers of the Renaissance titled Les Géographes Allemands De La Renaissance. Another noted publication of his was Régions naturelles et noms de pays. Étude sur la région Parisienne (Natural regions and country names. Study on the Paris region).

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (1697-1782), perhaps the greatest geographical author of the 18th century, was born at Paris on the 11th of July 1697. Both a geographer and cartographer, he greatly improved the standards of map-making. His maps of ancient geography, characterized by careful, accurate work and based largely on original research, are especially valuable. He left unknown areas of continents blank and noted doubtful information as such; compared to the lavish maps of his predecessors, his maps looked empty.

His passion for geographical research displayed itself from early years: at age of twelve he was already amusing himself by drawing maps forLatin authors. Later, his friendship with the antiquarian, Abbé Longuerue, greatly aided his studies.His first serious map, that of Ancient Greece, was published when he was fifteen. At the age of twenty-two, he was appointed one the king's geographers, and began to attract the attention of first authorities.

D'Anville's studies embraced everything of geographical nature in the world's literature, as far as he could muster it: for this purpose, he not only searched ancient and modern historians, travelers and narrators of every description, but also poets, orators and philosophers. One of his cherished subjects was to reform geography by putting an end to the blind copying of older maps, by testing the commonly accepted positions of places through a rigorous examination of all the descriptive authority, and by excluding from cartography every name inadequately supported. Vast spaces, which had before been bordered with countries and cities, were thus suddenly reduced mostly to a blank.

D'Anville was at first employed in the humbler task of illustrating by maps the works of different travellers, such as Marchais, Charlevoix, Labat and Duhaide. For the history of China by the last-named writer he was employed to make an atlas, which was published separately at the Hague in 1737. In 1735 and 1736 brought out two treatises on the figure of the earth; but these attempts to solve geometrical problems by literary material were, to a great extent, refuted by Maupertuis' measurements of a degree within the polar circle. D'Anville's historical method was more successful in his 1743 map of Italy, which first indicated numerous errors ip the mapping of that country and was accompanied by a valuable mémoir (a novelty in such work), showing in full the sources of the design. A trigonometrical survey which Benedict XIV soon after had made in the papal states strikingly confirmed the French geographer's results. In his later years d'Anville did yeoman service for ancient and medieval geography, accomplishing something like a revolution in the former; mapping afresh all the chief countries of the pre-Christian civilizations (especially Egypt), and by his Mémoire et abrégé de géographie ancienne et générale and his États formés en Europe après la chute de l'empire romain en occident (1771) rendering his labours still more generally useful. His last employment consisted in arranging his collection of maps, plans and geographical materials. It was the most extensive in Europe, and had been purchased by the king, who, however, left him the use of it during his life. This task performed, he sank into a total imbecility both of mind and body, which continued for two years, till his death in January 1782.

Demangeon, Albert (dāmäNzhōN'), 1872–1940, French geographer, specializing in the study of regional and economic geography. His best-known works include Le Déclin de L'Europe (1920), L'Empire britannique (1923), and Les Iles britanniques (1927).

Martonne, Emmanuel-Louis-Eugène de (France 1873-1955)physical geographyMartonne was one of the leading physical geographers of the twentieth century. He was essentially an old-style regional geographer who became enamored with the landscape evolution approach of American geographer William M. Davis, extending it in both scientific and educational directions. Topically, he concentrated on geomorphology, especially the processes of mountain glaciation, peneplain development, and hydrography. As a regional geographer, he contributed numerous studies: on districts in France, Rumania, the Alps, Central Europe, etc. But his most important legacy overall was his nearly lifelong project, the Traité de Géographie Physique. This first appeared in two volumes in 1909, and had expanded to three volumes (including a separate one for biogeography) by the fourth edition of 1925-1927, and eventually reached a tenth edition by the time of Martonne's death.

Life Chronology--born in Chabris, France, on 1 April 1873.--1892: enters the École Normale Supérieure in Paris--1895: graduates with degree in history and geography; thereafter works with Richthofen in Berlin and Penck in Vienna--1899: joins geography department at the University of Rennes--1904: accompanies William M. Davis on expedition to the American West and Mexico--1905: joins the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lyons--1909: made department head of geography in the Faculty of Letters at the Sorbonne--1909: publishes the first edition of his Traité de Géographie Physique--1916: visiting professor, Columbia University--1920s: studies regions of high aridity with internal drainage--1921: publishes study on the geographical regions of France--1926: publishes regional study of the Alps--1927-1944: serves as director of the Institut de Géographie, Paris--1931-1938: serves as secretary general of the International Geographical Union--1939: receives the American Geographical Society's Cullum Medal--1942: elected a member of the Académie des Sciences--1942: publishes his Géographie Physique de la France--1944: retires from the Sorbonne--1949: made president of life of the International Geographical Union--1950: receives the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, London--dies at Sceaux, France, on 24 July 1955.

Brunhes, Jean (brün) , 1869–1932, French geographer. He was a leading exponent of French systematic, as opposed to regional, geography. He studied human artifacts in the context of environment. He authored many texts, including Human Geography (1910) and Human Geography of France (2 vol., 1920–26). He was appointed to the Collège de France in 1912.

The author of nearly five hundred books, articles, and maps, Gaussen was one of the mid-twentieth century's most outstanding plant geographers. After taking his Ph.D. at the University of Toulouse, he continued on at that institution for most of the rest of his life, focusing his research efforts on French biogeography, agriculture, vegetation, ecology and forests, and on the evolutionary biology of gymnosperms; he also did work in economic geography, climatology, and botany. Gaussen's name is especially connected with Pyreneen studies. His professional connections included directorship of the Registry Vegetation of France, presidency of the Commission Française de Cartographie, and membership in the Academy of Sciences, Paris, and the French Academy of Agriculture.

Gaussen, (Marcel-) Henri (France 1891-1981)

--born in Cabrières d'Aigues, Vaucluse, France, on 14 July 1891.--1921: made a member of the faculty of sciences at the University of Toulouse--1926: publishes his thesis, Végétation de la Moitié Orientale des Pyrénées, Sol--Climat--Végétation--1930-1942: publishes his Les Forêts des Pyrénées, in 23 parts--1933: publishes his Géographie des Plantes--1934: publishes his Géographie Botanique et Agricole des Pyrénées Orientales--1937: publishes Charles Flahault's La Distribution Géographique des Végétaux dans la Région Méditerranéenne Française (Flahault died in 1935)--1946: made director of the Service de la Carte de la Végétation de la France, in Toulouse--1948: publishes his map Carte de la Végétation de la France--1971: receives the Grand Prix of the Société de Géographie pour Travaux et Publications Géographiques--dies at Toulouse, France, on 27 July 1981.

Joseph Bernard, marquis de Chabert (28 February 1724, Toulon - 1 December 1805) was a French sailor, geographer and astronomer.He marked himself out as a chef d'escadre during French involvement in the American War of Independence and was promoted to vice admiralin 1792. He was known above all for his scientific endeavours, notably in the rectification of naval charts of America's western coast and the coasts of the Mediterranean. He entered the Académie des sciences in 1758 and the Bureau des longitudes in 1803. In 1785, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Main workVoyage fait par ordre du roi en 1750 et 1751 dans l'Amérique septentrionale, pour rectifier les cartes des côtes de l'Acadie, de l'Ile-Royale et de l'île de Terre-Neuve, et pour en fixer les principaux points par des observations astronomiques, par M. de Chabert (Voyage made by order of the king, in 1750 and 1751 to north America, to rectify the charts of the coasts of Acadia, Ile-Royale and the island of Newfoundland, and to fix its principal points by astronomical observations, by Mr de Chabert., 1753)

Joseph Nicolas Nicollet (July 24, 1786–September 11, 1843), also known as Jean-Nicolas Nicollet, was a French geographer andmathematician known for mapping the Upper Mississippi River basin during the 1830s.Nicollet was born in Cluses, Savoy, France. He was very bright, showing an interest in mathematics and astronomy, and becoming a mathteacher at the age of 19. Starting in 1817, he worked at the Paris Observatory with the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace. Afterward, he worked as a mathematics professor at the Collège Louis-le-Grand during the 1820s.Following financial difficulties in France, Nicollet emigrated to the United States in 1832. First living in New Orleans, Louisiana, he later moved up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri.Nicollet led three expeditions exploring the Upper Mississippi, mostly in the area that is now Minnesota, but parts of North and South Dakotaas well. The first took place in 1836–37 and was largely funded by St. Louis's wealthy Choteau family. In it, Nicollet explored the Mississippi to its source of Lake Itasca and the nearby Mississippi tributary, the St. Croix River.

Following acceptance of a position with the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1838, Nicollet led a surveying mission from Fort Snelling to the Pipestone region in southwestern Minnesota and southeastern South Dakota in 1838, and led another mission in 1839 to further explore the region between the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. In these latter expeditions, he had assistance from John C. Frémont and the Jesuit Missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet. De Smet used skills learned from Nicollet to make his own maps of the Missouri River basin.After the expeditions, Nicollet left the Minnesota area to go to Washington, D.C. He worked on consolidating the information collected during the expeditions and fully intended to return to the area, but failing health led to his death in Washington in 1843. Later that year, a book containing much of his work, Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi, was published. The maps in the book were highly accurate and covered a region more than half the size of Europe.Today, Nicollet's name is applied to many places in the region he explored, including Nicollet Island (next to Saint Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River), Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, and Nicollet County in southern Minnesota.

Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802-1885) was a French geographer and scientist who theorized about the possibility of continental drift, anticipating Wegener's theories concerning Pangaea by several decades.In 1858, Snider-Pellegrini published in Paris his book, La Création et ses mystères dévoilés("Creation and its Mysteries Unveiled"). He proposed that all of the continents were once connected together during the Pennsylvanian Period. He based this theory on the fact that he had found plant fossils in both Europe and the United States that were identical.Snider-Pellegrini also believed that it was the Great Flood of the Bible that had caused the fragmentation of the supercontinent.

Emmanuel de Margerie (1862–1953) was a  French geographer after whom the Margerie Glacier was named, which he visited in 1913.

M. Sorre and medical geography

G.R. Crone vividly described the humanistic perspective of Sorre. According to Crone, "His field was 'life of man on the earth', and his special contribution was the development of the relations of geography with biology, medicine and sociology. He had a fine appreciation of the delicate balance between communities and their environment, and abhorred those economists who operated in terms of statistics rather than human beings." (Crone, 1963)

In the obituary of Max Sorre, Pierre George (1962) writes that M. Sorre had a deep interest in medical geography and established contacts with doctors, biologists and sociologists. He was the first academic geographer who gave impetus to the studies of medical geography in France. Sorre focused his attention to the regions which are affected by serious epidemics and outlined geographical framework for the study of infectious diseases. Sorre published a series of studies with focus on the relationship between the human organisms and the geographical surroundings and presented the synthesis of his work in the very original and monumental book: Biological Fundamentals of Human Geography, first published in 1943 (Sorre,1943). Sorre initiated discussions with the associations of doctors and hygienists, andimposed his authority in the medical circle to such an extent that he was invited in 1934 to write an important part of the book: Medical and Biological Climatology, by M. Piery (1934). M. Sorre's contribution in this book covers physical climatology and chemical climatology with focus on normal physioclimatology and pathology.