Irregular school attendance did not diminish his interest in the physical environment, human settlement and animal and plant ecology (C. Harris, 1968).
He spent most of his teenage years living between South Dakota and Chicago – where he attended the Lewis Institute to pursue a course in geology and biology.
In addition, the works of ecologist Harlan Barrows and sociologist George Vincent stirred Visher's interests in social evolution, educational attainment, civic sciences and the spatial nature of intelligence (C. Lavery, 2015).
For instance, they speculated that dynamic solar activity 'may be regarded as the great terrestrial contribution to the climatic environment which guides the development of life' (Huntington and Visher 1922, 240).
He suggested, for instance, that the climate, land-use, soil fertility and relief of the land were all factors that needed to be taken into consideration to give a fuller explanation of social and biological differences.
As Lavery (2015) has demonstrated, Visher used statistics from American Men of Science and Who's Who in America to claim that "the Northern and Eastern states contained disproportionately more 'notables' than any other areas of the country".