William Morris Davis

• His Early Life:
• William Morris Davis was born on 12 February 1850, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Edward M. Davis, was a businessman and his mother’s name was Maria Mott Davis. His maternal grandmother, Lucretia Mott, was a women’s rights and anti-slavery activist.
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• As a boy, he was not much interested in sports, rather he was more absorbed in his studies. For many years he was homeschooled by his mother; this laid the foundation of a flawless vocabulary and his firmness for accurate writings by his students.
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• He was a bright student and at the age of nineteen, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Harvard University. He received a Master of Engineering degree a year later in 1870.

His Career:

• William Morris Davis was an American geographer, geologist, and meteorologist, who founded the science of geomorphology—the study of landforms.
•  He is often referred to as the “Father of American Geography”. He began his career as a meteorologist with the National Observatory at Córdoba, Argentina, and in three years, he acquired a position with Harvard University, where he continued his employment for the next 36 years. 
• Post-retirement, he became a visiting lecturer to several universities, dedicated many hours to writing and field studies, and conducted in-depth researches of coral reefs and coral islands; the learnings of which were published in ‘The Coral Reef Problem’ (1928). During his lifetime, he published more than 500 works on Geography.
• William Morris Davis died on February 5, 1934,

His Influence in Meteorology:

• Davis studied meteorological phenomena, along with geological and geographical issues. This made his work much more valuable in that he could tie in one object of study to others.
• By doing this, he was able to show the correlation between the meteorological happenings that took place and the geological and geographical issues that were affected by them. This provided those who followed his work with much more information than otherwise available.
• While Davis was a meteorologist, he studied many other aspects of nature. Therefore, he addressed meteorological issues from a nature-based perspective. He became an instructor at Harvard teaching geology.