Peter Haggett was raised in southwest England. He attended Cambridge University in the 1950s, earning bachelors, masters, and two doctorates (PhD and DSc). He holds six honorary degrees in Law and Science from universities on both sides of the Atlantic. He became interested in disease geography by accident in 1968, when he was asked by Professor Brian Berry (then at the University of Chicago) to substitute for him at a multi-disciplinary seminar at the World Health Organization in Geneva. WHO’s chief statistician invited him to return and advise them on introducing some spatial components into their disease diffusion models. He has since contributed regularly to WHO and CDC. Andrew Cliff was his first Bristol PhD student in 1966, and they continue to work on infectious disease modelling together. One notable product of this collaboration is the World Atlas of Epidemic Diseases (with Cliff and Matthew Smallman-Raynor ) — London: Arnold Reference, 2004.
Peter is a gold medalist of both the Royal Geographical Society and the American Geographical Society, and he has also been awarded the Anders Retzius medal (Sweden), the Vautrid Lud Prize (France) and the Laureat d’Honneur, International Geographical Union.
Professor Haggett has researched and written in three scientific areas: First, on the nature of geography as a discipline and its contribution to human understanding of the earth; a second area is in quantitative methods in human geography and the central role of locational analysis; the third area has involved the application of geographical ideas to understanding the changing geography of infectious diseases.
Now retired but continuing his research actively, he lives in a small Somerset village with his wife, Brenda. Peter may be contacted at p.haggett@bristol.ac.uk; for further information, visit the Bristol School of Geographical Sciences website.
Updated: Peter Haggett, Professor Emeritus (urban and regional geography), School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Professor Haggett has held geographical research and teaching posts at universities worldwide for fifty years Throughout his distinguished career, Peter has focused on human geography and epidemiology — with special reference to the spatial distribution and diffusion of diseases
Health and Medical Geography 