Norman Thrower

Thrower was a long-time professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He joined the Department of Geography there in the mid-20th century and helped establish it as a premier institution for cartographic history. He was highly influential in shaping geographic education on the West Coast.

He is best known for authoring 'Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society.' This widely used academic survey covers the global history of cartography from the Stone Age to modern computer mapping. It remains a standard textbook in university geography courses.

Thrower lived to be 97 years old, from 1919 to 2016. His long life spanned the transition from manual drafting tools to the advent of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). He witnessed and documented more changes in mapmaking technology than almost any other historian.

While his textbook covered all eras, his personal research heavily focused on early modern cartography, particularly the maps of Sir Francis Drake. He was an expert on historical maps of California and the Pacific Coast. He also wrote extensively about the 18th-century British mapmaker Thomas Jefferys.