Emmanuel de Martonne

Emmanuel de Martonne (, 1 April 1873 – 24 July 1955) was a French geographer. He participated in the Paris Peace Conference.

Early life and education Martonne was born on 1 April 1873 in Chabris, Indre, France, and was the son-in-law of Paul Vidal de la Blache. In 1892, he entered the École Normale Supérieure. He graduated three years later with a degree in history and geography. He also lobbied for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to the French. De Martonne was also secretary of the Comité D'études, which worked on fixing boundary issues following the war, especially in Romania and the Balkans. He was familiar with Central Europe and Romania, as he had conducted studies in the Southern Carpathians earlier in his life. He died on 24 July 1955 in Sceaux, a commune near Paris. and, from 1938 to 1952, was president of the International Geographical Union. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1942. The second edition was published in 1913, and the third in 1920.

He published Les Alpes: Géographie générale, a study about the Alps, in 1926. This led to the "De Martonne aridity index".

In his work Problème des régions arides Sud-Américaines De Martonne was the first to coin and define the South American Arid Diagonal.