John Scott Keltie
Encyclopedia
Sir John Scott Keltie F.R.G.S., F.S.S
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society is a learned society for statistics and a professional body for statisticians in the UK.-History:It was founded in 1834 as the Statistical Society of London , though a perhaps unrelated London Statistical Society was in existence at least as early as 1824...

  (March 29, 1840 – January 12, 1927) was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 geographer
Geographer
A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

, best known for his work with the Royal Geographic Society.

Keltie was born in Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...

, and attended school in Perth
Perth, Scotland
Perth is a town and former city and royal burgh in central Scotland. Located on the banks of the River Tay, it is the administrative centre of Perth and Kinross council area and the historic county town of Perthshire...

. He attended the University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

 and the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, and completed a course of study at the Theological Hall of the United Presbyterian Church
United Presbyterian Church
United Presbyterian Church was the name of multiple Christian denominations in the world, among which are the following:*The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland , a union of the United Secession Church and the Relief Church which joined the Free Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church...

 in Edinburgh, but didn't go into a religious career. He moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1871 to join Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

, where in 1873 he became sub-editor of the journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

, and began separately to write articles on geography for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

. In 1880 he became editor of The Statesman's Yearbook
The Statesman's Yearbook
The Statesman's Yearbook is a one-volume reference book providing information on the countries of the world. It is currently published by Palgrave Macmillan.-The first edition:...

for Macmillan.

He joined the Royal Geographic Society in 1883, and quickly became heavily involved in its activities. He was appointed its Inspector of Geographical Education in 1884, and undertook a thorough review of the state of geography education in the UK, producing an influential 150-page report. In 1885 he became the Society's librarian, and upon the death of Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates
Henry Walter Bates FRS FLS FGS was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck...

 in 1892, succeeded him as Assistant Secretary of the Society (in effect its Secretary, as the official Secretary was a figurehead from the nobility). Among his first tasks was the relaunching of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographic Society as the Geographical Journal in 1893, in order to appeal to a wider audience. He was officially given the title of Secretary in 1896.

Keltie retired as Secretary of the Society in 1915 and was succeeded by Arthur Robert Hinks
Arthur Robert Hinks
Arthur Robert Hinks, CBE, FRS was a British astronomer and geographer..As an astronomer, he is best known for his work in determining the distance from the Sun to the Earth from 1900–1909: for this achievement, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and was elected a...

, though he remained as joint editor (with Hinks) of the Geographical Journal until 1917. He was awarded the Society's Victoria Medal
Victoria Medal (geography)
The Victoria Medal is an award presented by the Royal Geographical Society. It is awarded "for conspicuous merit in research in geography" and has been given since 1902.-Past recipients:...

 in 1917, and had also been awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal
Cullum Geographical Medal
The Cullum Geographical Medal is one of the oldest awards of the American Geographical Society. It was established in the will of Major General George Washington Cullum , the vice president of the Society, and is awarded "to those who distinguish themselves by geographical discoveries or in the...

 of the American Geographical Society
American Geographical Society
The American Geographical Society is an organization of professional geographers, founded in 1851 in New York City. Most fellows of the society are Americans, but among them have always been a significant number of fellows from around the world...

, and the gold medals of the Paris and Royal Scottish Geographical Societies.

Keltie was made a Knight Bachelor
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

in 1918. He died in London in 1927.
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