Robert W. Kates (January 31, 1929 – April 21, 2018). RIP.
[summarising some stuff I wrote on wiki, see also his personal web page at the bottom]
Kates was born in Brooklyn, New York. He dropped out of an undergraduate degree, and was inspired by a meeting in national park in Indiana to train as an elementary school teacher . He signed up for night school at Indiana University, Gary in 1957, when aged 28. One of his classes was in geography. Having found his calling and his discipline, he sought study advice from Gilbert F. White at the University of Chicago. White gave him some key texts to read, Kates returned to discuss them, White recognized his abilities and steered him through an MA and eventually a PhD in Geography (1962). He never finished his undergrad degree [which I thought was fantastic when I met him!] .
Kates taught at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University from 1962 until 1987, where I and many others on this list met him, and he has many PhD students. At Clark he also founded CENTED (the Centre for technology, environment, and development), now part of the Marsh Institute. He directed a resource assessment centre at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (from 1967–68).
From 1986 to 1992 he was Professor and Director of the interdisciplinary World Hunger Program at Brown University. Kates retired and worked as an 'independent scholar' and moved to Trenton, Maine in the early 1990s. He remained professionally active until his mid 80s and in 2008, was appointed the inaugural Presidential Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Maine, Orono (at age 79). He was a frequent attendee at AAG meetings until recently and received many honours .
Kates was a productive 'big thinker' , transcending geography. A 'human-environment' scholar - not explicitly radical or critical but certainly pioneering and very inventive - he had many interests and a commitment to socially engaged scholarship. These included long-term trends in environment, development, and population, and natural hazards mitigation, summed in his terms as "What is and ought to be the human use of the Earth?" He made many studies of natural and technological hazards, rural resource and water development, and methodologies for studying people's perception of the environment, the assessment of risk, and the impacts of climate on society. Following the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Kates returned to his earlier work on hazards and published a research perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans.
Honours - he was one of very few geographers to achieve any of the following: National Medal of Science (USA 1991): MacArthur Fellow (1981–85): Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: Fellow of the Academia Europaea: Laureat d’Honneur, International Geographical Union.
Books
Kates, R.W. 1962. Hazard and Choice Perception in Flood Plain Management. Department of Geography Research Paper no. 78, University of Chicago Press.
Kates, R.W. 1965. Industrial Flood Losses: Damage estimation in the Lehigh Valley. University of Chicago Press.
Kates, RW. and J. Wohlwill (eds). 1966. Man's Response to the Physical Environment. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XXII, No. 4, October.
Burton, I. and Kates, R.W. (Eds.). 1965. Readings in Resource Management and Conservation. University of Chicago Press.
Burton, I, R W. Kates, J R. Mather and R E. Snead, The Shores of Megalopolis: Coastal Occupance and Human Adjustment to Flood Hazard Climatology, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1965, pp. 435–603
Burton, I, R.W. Kates and R.E.Snead. 1969. The human ecology of coastal flood hazard in megalopolis. Dept. of Geography. Research paper no. 115. University of Chicago Press.
Russell, C.S., Arey D.G and R.W. Kates. 1970. Drought and Water Supply: Implications of the Massachusetts Experience for Municipal Planning. RFF Press.
Kates, R.W. (Ed.). 1977. Managing Technological Hazard: Research Needs and Opportunities. Boulder: Institute of Behavioral Science.
Hass J.E, R.W. Kates and M.J. Bowden. 1977. Reconstruction Following Disaster. MIT Press.
Kates, R.W. 1978. Risk Assessment of Environmental Hazards. SCOPE Report 8. John Wiley.
Burton I and Kates R.W. 1978. The Environment as Hazard. Oxford University Press. Second edition with a new introduction: Guilford Press, 1993.
Kasperson R.E. and R.W. Kates. 1980. Equity Issues in Radioactive Waste Management. Greenwood Press.
Berry L. and R.W. Kates (Eds.). 1980. Making the Most of the Least: Alternative Ways to Development. New York and London: Holmes & Meier.
Kates, R.W. 1984. Technological Hazards Management. Oelgeschlager Gunn & Hain.
Kates, R. W., J. H. Ausubel, and M. Berberian (eds.), 1985. Climate Impact Assessment: Studies of the Interaction of Climate and Society, ICSU/SCOPE Report No. 27, John Wiley.
Kates R.W., Hohenemser C. and J.X. Kasperson (Eds.). 1985. Perilous progress: Managing the hazards of technology. Westview Press.
Kates, R.W. and I. Burton (Eds.). 1986. Geography, Resources and Environment, Volume 1: Selected Writings of Gilbert F. White. University of Chicago Press.
Kates R.W. and I. Burton (Eds.). 1986. Geography, Resources and Environment, Volume 2: Themes from the Work of Gilbert F. White. University of Chicago Press.
Kasperson, RE., JX. Kasperson, C Hohenemser, and RW. Kates. 1988. Corporate Management of Health and Safety Hazards: A Comparison of Current Practice. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Newman L, (gen.eds. Kates, R.W. et al.) 1990. Hunger in History: Food Shortage, Poverty, and Deprivation. Blackwell.
J.X. Kasperson and R.W. Kates, (eds.), 1990. Overcoming Hunger in the 1990s, a special issue of Food Policy, Vol.15, No. 4, pp. 273–368.
Turner, B.L. II, Hyden G, and R.W. Kates (Eds.). 1993. Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa. University of Florida Press.
Turner, B.L. II, W.C. Clark, R.W. Kates, J.F. Richards, J.T. Mathews, W.B. Meyer (Eds.). 1990. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. Cambridge University Press.
Chen, RS. and RW. Kates (eds.). 1994. Climate Change and World Food Security special issue of Global Environmental Change, Vol. 4 No.1, March, 1994, pp. 1–88.
Burton, I. and Kates. R.W. (committee chairs). 1999. Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. National Academy of Sciences.
Raskin, P, T. Banuri, G.Gallopín, P. Gutman, A. Hammond, R.W. Kates, and R. Swart. 2002. Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead. Stockholm Environment Institute.
Kates R.W. et al. 2003. Global Change in Local Places: Estimating, Understanding, and Reducing Greenhouse Gases. Cambridge University Press.
Kates, R.W. with National Academies Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, 2005. Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Washington DC: National Academy Press.
2010. With National Academies, Committee on America’s Climate Choices, Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change. Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, Washington: National Academies Press.
Kates R.W.(ed.) 2011. Readings in Sustainability Science and Technology. Centre for International Development, Harvard University. ("This Reader is one possible set of materials for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students of sustainability science. It consists of links to 93 articles or book chapters from which appropriate readings and internet sources can be chosen")
Recent Articles
Kates, R. W., W. C. Clark, R. Corell, J. M. Hall, C., et al., 2001. Sustainability science, Science, Vol. 292, p. 641-642.
Parris, T. M. and R. W. Kates, 2003. Characterizing and Measuring Sustainable Development, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, pp 559-586.
Leiserowitz, Anthony A., Robert W. Kates, and Thomas M. Parris. 2005. Do Global Attitudes and Behaviors Support Sustainable Development? Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 47(9): 22-38.
Kates, R.W., T.M. Parris, and A.A. Leiserowitz. 2005. What is Sustainable Development? Goals, Indicators, Values, and Practice. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 47(3): 8-21
Kates, R.W., C.E. Colten, S.Laska, and S.P. Leatherman. 2006. Reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A research perspective. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Special Feature. 103(40) (26 September): 14653-14660.
Kates, R.W. 2007. Gilbert F. White, 1911-2006, Great Aspirations: Local Studies, National Comparisons, Global Challenges. First National Academy of Sciences Gilbert F. White Lecture in the Geographical Sciences. January 24, 2007. The National Academies Keck Center, Washington, D.C.
Kates, R. W. and P. Dasgupta, 2007. African Poverty: A Grand Challenge for Sustainability Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), pp. 16747-16750.
Colten, C. E., R. W. Kates, and S. B. Laska, 2008. Three Years after Katrina: Lessons for Community Resilience, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 50(5), pp. 36-47.
Kates, R. W. and I. Burton, 2008. Gilbert F. White, 1911–2006: Local Legacies, National Achievements, and Global Visions, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(2) pp. 1-8.
Wilbanks, T. J. and Kates, R. W., 2010. Beyond Adapting to Climate Change: Embedding Adaptation in Responses to Multiple Threats and Stresses, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(4) pp. 719 - 728.
Website
http://www.rwkates.org/
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