Raisz, Erwin

Erwin Raisz (1893-1968) was a Hungarian-born American cartographer, best known for his physiographic maps which describe landforms using his "orthoapsidal" Armadillo projection. Upon emigrating to New York in 1923, he worked for the Ohman Map Company while studying for his Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he offered one of the first courses in cartography in the United States. In 1931 he joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University, where he taught cartography and was curator of the map collection for 20 years. His hand-drawn pen-and-ink approach - at a time when such techniques had largely been replaced by photo-mechanical processes - give his maps a distinctive look.