ARMIN KOHL LOBECK, GEOMORPHOLOGIST AND LANDSCAPE ARTIST, 1886–1958

Abstract

ARMIN KOHL LOBECK was born in New York City on August 16, 1886. When he was three years of age his family moved to Haworth, New Jersey, where he grew up and received his early schooling. He died on April 26, 1958, at the age of 71 in Englewood, New Jersey, where he had resided since 1929. As the eldest of five sons, he withdrew from school to help support the family when his father became ill. However, he was soon able to return to high school and complete his secondary education. Older than most high school graduates he was 21 when he entered Columbia College in 1907. Being of serious mien he tried to make the most of his educational opportunity. He continued to live in Haworth and made the arduous round trip to the University each day. He studied in the fields of botany and architecture, both to become significant in his professional career. He graduated in 1911 with the A.B. degree. In his senior year at Columbia he enrolled in the Graduate School and made some progress on his Master's degree, which was awarded in 1913. He began his teaching career at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, where he taught botany for three years, 1911-14. After concluding his teaching service in Philadelphia he returned to the University and continued graduate work in physiography and geology. Here he came under the influence of Douglas W. Johnson, a noted scholar in the field of geomorphology. It was in the study of geomorphology and structural geology that he began to apply his knowledge of architecture to the representation of landforms, a method that become known as physiographic drawing. After spending a season in Puerto Rico doing field work for his dissertation he returned to the University and completed the requirements for the Ph.D. degree, which he received in 1917. He entered the United States Army during World War I and was sent to Camp Dix. He was soon transferred to the Department of State and assigned to Inquiry, organized by Colonel E. M. House during the war to prepare for the making of peace. When the war was over he became a member of the Geography Section of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace and went to France in December 1918. He became closely associated with Isaiah Bowman, Mark Jefferson, Lawrence Martin, and other distinguished geographers who were attached to the Commission. His duties consisted chiefly of the preparation of a number of physiographic maps of problem areas, such as the Balkans, the Istrian Peninsula, Albania, and others. After the war these maps were published by the American Geographical Society. It was at the Peace Conference in Paris that he met Professor C. K. Leith, Chairman of the Department of Geology at the University of Wisconsin. Professor Leith was looking for a physiographer-geographer who could fill the position in the Department that had been vacant for two years because of the resignation of Lawrence Martin. Lobeck accepted the position as an assistant professor and he and Mrs. Lobeck moved to Madison in the autumn of 1919. He remained at the University of Wisconsin for 10 years and during this period his first physiographic maps of major scientific and educational importance were prepared and published. The large-scale Physiographic Diagram [map] of the United States was published by A. J. Nystrom Company in 1921. He began work at once on a small-scale edition of this map of the United States. The map and the accompanying text were published in 1922 by the Wisconsin Geographical Press wholly owned by him. This was the beginning of a most successful publishing business which he took to Columbia University and renamed The Geographical Press. In 1954 it was transferred to C. S. Hammond & Company as a division of that firm. In the autumn of 1929 Professor Lobeck returned to Columbia University as Professor of geology and was given responsibility for instruction in the elementary courses. In this aspect of his teaching service his influence was essentially dual in character. Not only the students in his classes came under his skillful