Currently vice-chancellor for academic affairs and professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, David Ward received his Ph.D. in 1963 from the University of Wisconsin. He was one of a large number of Wisconsin students who, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, led a major research thrust in historical geography, much of which had a solid theoretical and analytical orientation.
Over the past two decades, Ward has published a set of important books on North America, particularly its cities. His Cities and Immigrants (1971), historical geography at its best, set a research agenda for scholars for more than a decade after its publication. Although some of this research relates to broad themes relevant to the evolution of the human landscape, it also includes detailed examinations of selected cities, notably Boston and New York.
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