Ellen Churchill Semple

Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932) was an American geographer, born in Louisville, Kentucky, and educated at Vassar. In the 1890s she studied at Leipzig under Friedrich Ratzel, who would not admit a woman to his seminar and let her listen from an adjoining room, and she became the leading exponent of his anthropogeography in the English-speaking world. Her books American History and Its Geographic Conditions, Influences of Geographic Environment and The Geography of the Mediterranean Region examined how land and climate shape peoples and their history. She taught at the University of Chicago and at Clark University and in 1921 became the first woman president of the Association of American Geographers.