Erwin Raisz

Erwin Raisz (1 March 1893, Lőcse, Hungary – 1 December 1968, Bangkok, Thailand) was a Hungarian-born American cartographer, best known for his physiographic maps of landforms.

Born in Lőcse, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) in 1893, Raisz was the son of a civil engineer who introduced him to maps through his work.

[1] In 1931 he joined the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University, where he taught cartography and was curator of the map collection for 20 years.

He created a significant body of work using hand-drawn pen-and-ink techniques, which during that period were largely being replaced by photo-mechanical processes and scribing.

He travelled extensively for his work and died in Bangkok on December 1, 1968, en route to present a paper at the 11th International Geographical Congress meeting in New Delhi.