David Woodward (cartographer)

Woodward died of cancer on 25 August 2004, at his home in Madison. Woodward's mentor, Arthur H. Robinson, died several weeks later. He had appeared at Woodward's memorial service.

In 1980, Woodward returned to University of Wisconsin–Madison as a member of the faculty; he was named Arthur H. Robinson Professor of Geography in 1995. Woodward was a part of the university's cartography department until he retired from teaching in August 2002 to dedicate more of his time to research, editing, and outreach.

During a 1977 walk through the countryside in Exeter, England, Woodward and J. Brian Harley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, developed the idea for what became the History of Cartography Project. They envisioned an ambitious multi-volume reference work that would examine the social production and consumption of maps across cultures from prehistoric origins to the 20th century. Harley died in 1991, but Woodward completed the work. These volumes are now the benchmark for students and academics in the field. James R. Akerman, Woodward's successor at the Newberry Library, has stated that Woodward's contributions to the field of cartography history are so substantial that they "defy attempts to summarize them". Malcolm Lewis stated that Woodward "transformed the history of cartography from a directionless Eurocentric field into a respectable subject now global in scope." [1]

Woodward spent the next 11 years at the Newberry Library in Chicago as cartographic specialist and curator of maps. He served as director of the library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography from 1974 to 1980.

Woodward was born in Royal Leamington Spa, England. After receiving a bachelor's degree from the Swansea University (then the University of Wales at Swansea), he moved to the United States to study cartography under Arthur H. Robinson at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He earned a doctorate in geography in 1970.

David Woodward (29 August 1942 – 25 August 2004) was an English-born American historian of cartography and cartographer.

A full bibliography of Woodward's publications is provided in Matthew H. Edney, "David Alfred Woodward (1942-2004)," Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography 57.1 (2005): 75-83. A number of reminiscences about Woodward as a scholar and a teacher can also be found in a special issue of Cartographic Perspectives, no. 51 (Spring 2005), dedicated to Woodward and to his mentor, Arthur H. Robinson.