Raoul Blanchard

Raoul Blanchard (4 September 1877 – 24 March 1965) was a French geographer. He taught at the University of Grenoble from 1906 and devoted most of his research to Alpine and Canadian geography.

Early life The son of an inspector of the Department of Water of Orléans, Blanchard attended Holy Cross School and Pothier Secondary School, where he studied under the geographer Louis Gallouédec. He was admitted to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1897, he became excited by geography, which was taught by Paul Vidal de La Blache.

Blanchard received his agrégation in 1900 and became a professor at the school of Douai, France. He prepared a thesis on the regional geography of Flanders, which he defended in 1906 under the title Flanders, Geographic Study of the Flemish Plain in France, Belgium, Holland.

Grenoble A few months after his successful defence, he was appointed to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Grenoble. In 1907, he founded a research centre on the French Alps of which very little was then known. The Alpine Geography Institute was endowed in 1913, and its journal began in 1920 and became the Revue de géographie alpine (Alpine Geography Review).

North America Blanchard was appointed an instructor at Harvard University, in Massachusetts, in 1917 and was named a full professor from 1928 to 1936, which gave him the opportunity to spend a few months a year in North America. In 1929, he grew interested in the geography of French-speaking Canada. Given the Francophone roots in the Canadian province of Quebec and the facilities available there, Blanchard enjoyed researching the vast area, which had not been the subject of geographical study. Until 1960, he visited Quebec 15 times. He began to produce documents about Quebec with a strictly-geographical method. In addition, the geography department of the University of Montreal honoured him by naming its largest classroom after him.

As of 2020, he is the only geographer to have received the CNRS gold medal (1960).

In 1966, the Association des Amis de l'Université de Grenoble published Raoul Blanchard (1877-1965): in memoriam, which contains a biography.

In the centre of Grenoble is rue Raoul-Blanchard.

Collège Raoul-Blanchard is in Annecy.

A spatial analysis laboratory named after him is in Nice.

Since June 5, 1954, a street is named after him in Koksijde.

Selected bibliography He wrote about 290 works covering a wide range of subjects such as Flanders, the French Alps, the Middle East and North America (especially Quebec).

La Flandre. Étude de géographie de la plaine flamande, en France, Belgique et Hollande, Armand Colin, Paris, 1906 « L’Habitation en Queyras », La Géographie, 1909 « Sur quelques géants américains », Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris, Paris, 1909. Grenoble, étude de géographie urbaine, Armand Colin, Paris, 1911 Rapport général de l'exposition internationale de la houille blanche, Grands établissements de l'imprimerie générale, Grenoble, 1925 Les Alpes françaises, Armand Colin, Paris, 1925 « Asie occidentale », Géographie universelle, Paris, 1929 « La presqu'île de Gaspé », Revue de Géographie Alpine, Grenoble, 1930 « Les Problèmes du Canada français », Académie des sciences morales et politiques, Paris, 1932 « L'Amérique du Nord : États-Unis, Canada et Alaska », Fayard, Paris, 1933 « Géographie de l'industrie », 1934 L'Est du Canada français, Province de Québec, 2 vol., Montréal, 1935 A geography of Europe, together with Raymond E. Christ, Henry Holt, New York, 1935 Grenoble, étude de géographie urbaine, 3rd edition, Librairie Didier & Richard, Grenoble, 1935. « Géographie de Québec », Bulletin de la Société de Statistique, Grenoble, 1935. Les Alpes occidentales, 1937; 1958 Géographie générale, 1938 Le Centre du Canada français, 1947 Montréal: esquisse de géographie urbaine, 1947. Le Québec par l'image, 1949 La Mauricie, 1950 Les Alpes et leur destin, Fayard, Paris, 1953 L'Ouest du Canada français, 5 vol., Montréal, 1953-1954. Réflexions sur les hautes vallées alpestres, Grenoble, 1958 Le Canada français, 1960-1964 Le Canada français, 3rd edition, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1970