Eighteen fifty-one was a time of keen interest in Polar exploration, and Sir John Franklin’s expedition had been missing in the Arctic for four years. Tantalizing rumors hinted that survivors might be stranded at one place or another.

Lady Franklin appealed for help, and rescue missions were launched. In our own time, that would be like having astronauts stranded in space, unable to tell the world where they are or what they found, and watching their families plead for rescue. The double appeal of compassion and curiosity aroused a small band of scholars, businessmen, and statesmen to found the American Geographical Society. Interestingly, membership was open to both men and women right from the start.

Thus from its birth in 1851, the AGS has pursued exploration with a passion for science and discovery. The Society was the earliest such institution founded in Anglophone America. The founders laid the groundwork for geographical inquiry in Northern America. However, it took three remarkable people to establish the importance of the society on the world stage: Judge Charles P. Daly, Archer M. Huntington, and Isaiah Bowman. The AGS made great strides under their leadership.

Judge Daly presided over AGS from 1864 to 1899. In his 40 years as a member, 35 of it as president, he was famous for his annual address to the society’s members. As an ardent geographer, he was also instrumental in expanding the society’s library collection, which became the largest, privately maintained geographical research library and map collection in the Western Hemisphere.

Dr. Isaiah Bowman is credited with establishing the international standing of the American Geographical Society. As director, Bowman spearheaded many new projects, such as the construction of the Millionth Map and studies of polar geography. Bowman also represented the society as an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. He was one of the founders and guiding lights of the Council of Foreign Relations in its early decades.

Celebrating 150 Years

This year, the American Geographical Society celebrates 150 years of exemplary service to science, the nation, and the world. Many of the society’s accomplishments are astonishing by any standard.

In 1851, much of the western United States was unexplored, but that was about to change in preparation for the Trans-Continental Railway, subject of the very first paper presented before the Society. A heated national debate ensued, and the AGS contributed mightily to those deliberations for twenty years by supporting projects, serving as a neutral forum for information on all routes, and ultimately compiling the most complete map of its day for comparing the five candidate routes.

During World War I, the interdisciplinary, government-sponsored "Inquiry" in preparation for the Paris Peace Conference was led by the AGS and headquartered in the Society’s building in New York. After the Armistice in 1918, President Wilson and the American Delegation sailed for France. With them sailed AGS Director Isaiah Bowman and three truckloads of geographical information compiled by Bowman and 150 geographers, historians, economists, statisticians, ethnographers, political scientists, and scholars of international law.

The AGS has a distinguished record as a research institution and "think tank" with publications that are classics in geography: e.g. Owen Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China, Jacques May’s Atlas of Disease, L. Dudley Stamp’s Land for Tomorrow, Kenneth Bertrand’s Americans in Antarctica, 1775-1948, and Stephen Haden-Guest et al.’s World Geography of Forest Resources.

Cartography at the AGS has set pioneering standards. In addition to the Millionth Map, the Society prepared the best yet map of Antarctica and some of the earliest charts for aerial navigation. The Society was also a pioneer in aerial photography, covering the entire continent of Africa, for instance, when the only airplanes were single-engine propeller models.

As a "learned society", the AGS has continued to be the traditional link between geographical scholarship and the outside world, especially the business sector. For that reason, the AGS provides research-based, internationally circulated publications, written by professional geographers but carefully edited to be understandable to non-geographers as well as to geographers.

Many famous people have consulted the AGS and used its scholarly resources or have been associated with the AGS as Fellows, Councilors, officers, Medalists, donors, or exploration/research staff.  Among them are: