Taaffe, Edward

Born in Chicago . He received a bachelor's degree in journalism and geography, and then went to the front. He served in the US Air Force in Western Europe as a lieutenant (was a meteorologist). Demobilized, he continued his education: in 1949 he received a master's degree in geography, in 1952 he became a doctor of geography. In 1951-1958 he taught at the University. Loyoles in Chicago, then at Northwestern University. In 1962 he moved with his family to Columbus , where he headed the Department of Geography at Ohio State University , where he worked until the end of his life.

In 1971-1972 he was president of the Association of American Geographers , in 1982 and 1983, his contribution to geographical science was awarded the Association's awards. In 1990, became the first recipient of the Ulman Prize for work in the field of transport geography. In 1974 he resigned as head of the faculty, from 1992 until the end of his life he was an honorary professor at the university, continuing to publish the results of scientific research and assist colleagues.

In 1948, Edward married Marileys Dunn, eight children were born in the family ^[1] .

Edward Taaffe was one of the prominent representatives of the school of spatial analysis that arose after the "quantitative revolution" of the late 1950s. The most significant contribution of Taaffe to the geography of transport , in the framework of which he widely used mathematical models of the evolutionary development of transport systems. In particular, it was Taaffe who first demonstrated that connectivity first grows in the transport network ( graph theory was used to evaluate it), and only then there is a differentiation into central and peripheral elements depending on their capacity. In 1952, for the first time in American geography, the Hinterland of the Chicago air hub was studied (by analogy with this study, a large number of works were further conducted to study the various gravity zones of large cities). Taaffe's book “The Geography of Transport” (1973, reprinted in 1996) is still one of the main works of the same scientific direction.

• The Peripheral Journey to Work: A Geographic Consideratian, 1963.
• Transport Expansion in Unverdeveloped Countries, Geographical Review, 1963.
• Geography of Transportation, Prentice-Hall, 1973.
• The Spatial View in Context, AAG Presidential Address, Annals AAG, 1974.