Ellsworth Huntington (1876-1947), American geographer, explorer, and author, whose work focused on the effects of climate on human heredity and civilization. Born in Galesburg, Illinois, he was an instructor at Euphrates College in Turkey from 1897 to 1901, the year in which he explored the canyons of the Euphrates River. Between 1903 and 1906 he travelled extensively in Central Asia. In 1907, Huntington began teaching at Yale University and published The Pulse of Asia, in which he advanced the idea that Mongol and Manchu migrations were caused by climatic change. As a research associate of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D. C., Huntington participated in an expedition to Palestine (1909) and in a series of studies (1910-1913) on climate in the United States, Mexico, and Central America. In 1917 he became research associate in geography at Yale and, until his retirement in 1945, concentrated on cultural geography and climatic studies. Huntington's work was wide ranging, but is noted particularly for its concern with the effects of climate on human heredity and civilization. His approach to geographical study, sometimes called environmental determinism, resulted in claims for the superiority of the peoples of the temperate zone to those of the tropics and intermediate zones. Such conclusions are today viewed as ethnocentric and of little scientific validity. Nevertheless, Huntington is recognized as a major figure in the development of geographical study in the United States. His many writings include Civilization and Climate (1915; revised ed. 1924), The Character of Races (1924), The Human Habitat (1927), and Mainsprings of Civilization (1945).