Kant, Edgar

Born in 1902 in Tallinn, in a merchant family. He studied at the University of Tartu . He was one of the first students of the Finnish geographer Johannes Gabriel Grano , Who in 1919 became a professor in Tartu. The beginning of Edgar Kant's scientific career coincided with the first years of Estonia’s independence , when the need for a young state in regional geographical research was great.

After graduation he traveled a lot, was in Switzerland , Hungary , France , Holland , Germany , Algeria . In 1923-1924 he held the post of assistant at the University of Tartu, in 1926 published a study of urban morphology of Tartu , based on the extensive collected material of empirical data on the relationship between the city and its surrounding area. Edgar Kant paid great attention to the role of cities in the development of Estonia, at that time a predominantly agricultural country, with only a quarter of its population living in cities . In 1934, he defended a dissertation at the University of Tartu, “Environmental and Population Problems in Estonia,” dedicated to the formation of the urban network of central Estonia. In this work, in particular, he proposed to consider the Baltic (“Baltoscandia”) as an independent geographical region, of which Estonia is a part ^[1] . In the same year he became an assistant professor at the university.

Since 1936 - professor of economic geography, in 1938-1940 - vice-rector of the University of Tartu. In 1938, he became one of the first 12 academics appointed to the newly created Estonian Academy of Sciences , and became head of the Humanities Section ^[2] . He participated in the creation of the atlas of Estonia. In 1939 he was awarded the Order of the White Star of the III degree.

After Estonia joined the USSR in 1940, he left all posts. In 1941-1944 (during the German occupation ) Edgar Kant was interim rector of the University of Tartu. In fact, he assumed the duties of the rector on July 20, 1941. One of the first orders of the new rector was to remove books of communist content from all university libraries and transfer all Russian-language books that appeared at the university during the Soviet era to special storage. In February 1942, with a claim of insufficient qualifications, all teachers of the Russian language (10 people), as well as a number of other teachers of Russian nationality, were dismissed from the university. Nevertheless, the Slavic department of the university was preserved and worked all the time of the German occupation, students continued to receive diplomas in Slavic philology and even one doctoral dissertation was defended ^[3] .

Edgar Kant openly supported the German occupation administration, in November 1943 at a private meeting of former statesmen of independent Estonia, he, among other figures, called for actively promoting the entry of Estonians into the German army ^[4] .

After Estonia returned to the control of the Soviet Union, he was forced to leave his homeland. He continued his scientific work in Sweden , at Lund University , from 1945 to 1947 - in the university archive; in 1947-1950 as a teacher, until 1963 - as a research assistant, in 1963-1967 as a professor. Edgar Kant's extensive international relations have had a significant impact on the development of Swedish geographical science. The main areas of research by Edgar Kant at that time were the modernization of the regional administrative division of Sweden, the study of migration flows , in subsequent years he became interested in the history of geographical terminology. Since 1965, Edgar Kant participated in the creation of an international geographic dictionary, specializing in regional geography. He died in 1978 in Lund.

The sociographic and anthropoecological heritage of Edgar Kant has not yet lost its relevance and continues to be widely studied ^[5] .

• Course, Ott. The scientific heritage of Edgar Kant (est.) . - Tallinn: Academy, 1992. - S. 578-606. - 606 s.
• Jussi Jauhiainen. Edgar Kant and the Rise of Modern Urban Geography, Geografiska Annaler. Series B. Human Geography, Vol. 87, No. 3, 2005, p. 193-203
• Ann Buttimer and Tom Mels, 'By Northern Lights: on the making of Geography in Sweden', Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2006