Geographer
TANG Maolin, LIU Kai, SUN Jun
Ron Johnston is a world-renowned human geographer and historian of geographic thought. In his fruitful life, he made unparalleled contribution to the discipline of human geography. His contribution is not only reflected in his empirical research in urban geography, political geography, and political science with many academic journal papers, but also in his pioneering research on the history of geographical thought and quantitative research methods, and classic works such as Geography and Geographers. He published more than 40 academic monographs, including Philosophy and Human Geography, On Human Geography, and Putting Votes into Their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain, edited or coedited more than 40 academic monographs, including A Dictionary of Human Geography, The Future of Geography, and A Century of British Geography. As a university faculty, teaching is one of the three academic works. Johnston acted as course instructor for undergraduate courses such as Urban Geography, Urbanization, Internal Structure of the City, Philosophy and Methodology of Human Geography, Political Geography, State and Economic Restructuring, Contemporary Economic and Political Issues, Geography of Election, Research Methods, Multivariate Statistical Analysis, The State and the Environment, An Introduction to Geography, and for graduate courses, including Urban Geography, Urban Internal Structure, and Multivariate Statistics/Computing. As an advisor, Johnston supervised 47 graduate students. He wrote several important textbooks, including Multivariate Statistical Analysis in Geography: A Primer on the General Linear Model and Geography of Elections. He also set us a good example in terms of academic service. He coedited both Progress in Human Geography and Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space for 25 years (1979-2004), and served on countless editorial boards. He also often served as an external reviewer, participating in the evaluation of dissertations, research fund proposals, professional training programs, book manuscripts, RAE (research assessment exercise), REF (research excellence framework), professional title promotion, and so on. He published many book reviews to build healthy academic community culture. Ron Johnston's diligence, persistence, kindness, and warm and academic service spirit will always inspire us to move forward. We, as Chinese counterparts, can learn a lot from Ron Johnston as a professor and a member of the academic community.