Retirement and a New Book

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On the eve of his retirement this past May, Mark Monmonier, Distinguished Professor of Geography and the Environment, was less inclined to talk about his storied career, focusing instead on a recent project that brought together seemingly all his interests.

The project is his latest book, titled Clock & Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address. Due out in early 2022, it tells the story of its namesake, who attended a pioneer Denver vocational high school, became a farmer in his mid-30s, and patented several inventions including the “Clock System,” which assigned addresses to rural residences without house numbers.

Monmonier searched census records, newspaper archives, city directories and more to learn about the seldom photographed Plato, who also held a patent for his invention of a braking system for horse-drawn wagons.

“The thing I admire about Plato is that he is one of the few inventors of a patented map- related invention who actually took it forward to making and selling a product,” says Monmonier, adding, “But getting there was tricky.”

Monmonier’s fascination may be inspired by his roots: His grandfather was an inventor who held patents for things like milk bottle caps. Or, it may be that the Plato story brings together so much of what has made Monmonier a legend in his field and among those who have been fortunate to take his courses at Maxwell. For as much as he is a geographer and cartographer, he is a historian with a gift for storytelling and writing (he says the last part was aided by the three courses he audited at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications).

In April, Monmonier received word that continued on page 27

BY continued from page 26 he’d received the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award. It is a well-deserved honor, says Tom Perreault, professor and chair of geography and the environment.

“Professor Monmonier has had a truly extraordinary career,” he says. “During his nearly 50 years at Syracuse University, he has taught thousands of students and advised and mentored an untold number of them. He leaves a legacy of scholarship that is second to none and which extends well beyond the University.”

Monmonier joined the Maxwell faculty in 1973. He authored the first general textbook on computer-assisted cartography (Prentice-Hall, 1982) and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984.

All told, he has authored more than 20 books, including How to Lie with Maps, which in December 2020 was named one of the “eight essential books for geographers” by Geographical Magazine, the National Geographic of the United Kingdom.

Like Plato and his grandfather, Monmonier is regarded as an inventor. What has become known as the “Monmonier Algorithm”—based on an article he published the same year he joined Maxwell—is an important research tool for geographic studies in linguistics and genetics.

His lengthy curriculum vitae includes editing the million-word, National Science Foundation-supported encyclopedia Cartography in the Twentieth Century (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2015) and publishing papers too numerous to count on everything from map design to automated map analysis to mass communication.