Walter Behrmann

Walter Emmerich Behrmann (May 22, 1882, Oldenburg – May 3, 1955, Berlin) was a German geographer. He is remembered for introducing a cylindrical map projection known as the "Behrmann projection".^[1]

Map of the World in Behrmann projection

Biography

From 1901 to 1905, he studied geography, mathematics and physics at the University of Göttingen, where he was a student of Hermann Wagner. Later on, he worked as an assistant to geographer Joseph Partsch at the University of Leipzig (1908/09).^[2] In 1912/13 he participated as a geographer in the Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss Expedition to New Guinea^[3] along with Richard Thurnwald.^[4]

In 1918 he was appointed director of the Landeskundliche Kommission in Romania. In 1922 he was named an associate professor of cartography at the University of Berlin, and afterwards was a professor of geography at Frankfurt University (from 1923) and at the Free University of Berlin (from 1948). In 1954 he attained "professor emeritus" status.^[2]

Selected works

• Über die niederdeutschen Seebücher des fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1906 (doctoral thesis).
• Nach Deutsch-Neuguinea, 1914.
• Der Sepik (Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss) und sein Stromgebiet, 1917.
• Im Stromgebiet des Sepik, eine deutsche Forschungsreise in Neuguinea, 1922.
• Das westliche Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land in Neu-Guinea, 1924.
• Rhein-Mainischer Atlas für Wirtschaft, Verwaltung und Unterricht, 1929 (with Otto Maull).
• Aufgaben der Kolonialkartographie, 1936.
• Die Entschleierung der Erde, 1948.^[5][6]