Bowman, Isaiah

Isaiah Bowman (December 26, 1878 - January 6, 1950) was an American geographer, academic administrator, and government official best known as the President of Johns Hopkins University and an advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt before and during the Second World War. Bowman was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada but his family moved to Michigan soon after his birth. After initially studying geography at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti (now Eastern Michigan University), Bowman entered Harvard University, where he graduated in 1905, and then went on to graduate school at Yale University. Bowman showed impressive aptitude from an early stage in his career, including with administrative tasks, and became the first director of the American Geographical Society (AGS) when it was founded in 1915. Bowman rapidly expanded the organization and crafted a public role for it, advising the U.S. government and President Wilson on geographical matters in determining the aftermath of World War I in Europe. As 'Chief Territorial Specialist' for the U.S. delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, Bowman helped determine the contentious postwar borders of new nation-states, particularly in the Balkans. Having led the AGS for twenty years and continued an active program of research, Bowman was tapped to become president of Johns Hopkins University in 1935. By all accounts, he fixed the university's unfavorable financial situation, caused in large part by the Great Depression, though he also exhibited an intense Antisemitic streak, including the imposition of a 'Jewish quota' while most other prestigious universities were removing such quotas. Bowman continued a close association with the U.S. government, made easier by his proximity to Washington while at Johns Hopkins. In 1939, President Roosevelt tapped him to lead 'Project M,' designed to find places to settle Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Roosevelt chose Bowman for this job knowing of his Antisemitism, a sop to isolationists and Antisemites in his own party who did not want Jewish refugees to settle in the U.S. During the Second World War, Bowman championed the establishment of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, which developed important advances in weaponry that helped the war effort. In sum, Bowman was a giant of the geographical profession who did more than perhaps anyone else to define it in the early 20th century, but his legacy has been tarnished by his avowed and intransigent Antisemitism.