[1][2][3][4] With a career spanning over four decades, Getis authored more than one hundred peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, greatly influencing GIScience and geography as a whole.
[5] The Getis-Ord family of statistics, one of the most commonly used in spatial analysis, is based on his and J. Keith Ord's work and is still widely used in the creation of hot spot maps.
[1][2][4] Here, he worked as a doctoral student under William Garrison, a prominent geographer and leader of the quantitative revolution in geography.
[1][2] This experience would set him on a path to researching spatial statistics as they apply to fields such as retail, public health, and crime clustering, among others.
[12][13][1] Getis worked with geographer Michael Goodchild to establish GIScience foundations in academia, advancing the discipline.
[5] Getis published more than 100 peer-reviewed journals and book chapters during his career that have been cited over 25,000 times, giving him an h-index of 53.
[4][5] Several of these books were co-authored with his wife, Judy (Marckwardt) Getis, who held a master's degree in geography from Michigan State University and was a respected author.
[1] The Getis-Ord family of statistics has been applied across a variety of disciplines, including epidemiology/public health, land use, crime analysis, and economics.