Editing Carl Ritter (section)

==Biography==
Carl Ritter was born in [[Quedlinburg]], one of the six children of a doctor, F. W. Ritter.

Ritter's father died when he was two. At the age of five, he was enrolled in the [[Schnepfenthal Salzmann School]], a school focused on the study of [[nature]] (apparently influenced by [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'s writings on children's education).  This experience would influence Ritter throughout his life, as he retained an interest in new educational modes, including those of [[Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi]].  Indeed, much of Ritter's writing was based on Pestalozzi's three stages in teaching: the acquisition of the material, the general comparison of material, and the establishment of a general system.

After completion of his schooling, Ritter was introduced to Bethmann Hollweg, a banker in [[Frankfurt]]. It was arranged that Ritter should become [[tutor]] to Hollweg's children, but that in the meantime he should attend the [[University of Halle]] at his patron's expense. His duties as tutor began in 1798 and continued for fifteen years. The years 1814–1819, which he spent at [[Göttingen]] in order still to watch over his pupils, were those in which he began to exclusively study geography.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}  It was there that he courted and married Lilli Kramer, from [[Duderstadt]] and that he wrote and published the first two volumes of his ''Erdkunde''.

In 1819, he became professor of history at Frankfurt, and in 1820, he received a teaching appointment in history at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]].  Ritter received his doctorate there in 1821, and was appointed ''professor extraordinarius'' in 1825. He also lectured at a nearby military college.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} He was particularly interested in the exploration of Africa and held constant contacts with British scholars and scientific circles like the [[Royal Geographical Society]]. He was one of the academic teachers of the explorer [[Heinrich Barth]], who traveled in Northern and Western Africa on behalf of the British government to negotiate treaties that were to stop the Trans-Saharan slave trade. Carl Ritter himself was a dedicated anti-slavery propagandist in Germany.

Ritter's impact on geography was especially notable because he brought forth a new conception of the subject.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} In his view:

{{blockquote|geography was a kind of [[physiology]] and comparative [[anatomy]] of the earth: rivers, mountains, [[glacier]]s, &amp;c., were so many distinct organs, each with its own appropriate functions; and, as his physical frame is the basis of the man, determinative to a large extent of his life, so the structure of each country is a leading element in the historic progress of the nation.

The earth is a cosmic individual with a particular organization, an ''ens sui generis'' with a progressive development: the exploration of this individuality of the earth is the task of geography.}}

In 1822, Ritter was elected to the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences]], and in 1824, he became a corresponding member of the ''Société Asiatique de Paris''. In 1828, he established the ''[[Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin]]'' (Berlin Geographical Society). He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1849.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter R|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterR.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=8 September 2016}}</ref> In 1856, he was appointed curator of the Royal Cartographic Institute of Prussia. He died in [[Berlin]] in 1859.

In 1865, a monument to Ritter was installed at the entrance to the Bruehl in Quedlinburg. The house where he was born, number 15 Steinbrücke, was torn down in 1955. There is an additional monument at the Mummental school honoring both Ritter and his teacher [[Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths]].  The [[Ritter Range]] in California is named after him.<ref>Browning, Peter (1986) ''Place Names of the Sierra Nevada.'' Berkeley: Wilderness Press. p. 183.</ref>