John B. Whittow

After graduating in geography at Reading University in 1952, John Whittow studied landform evolution in North Wales, for which he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1957. He has held university lecturing posts in Ireland, East Africa and Australia and has also been a Research Associate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He retired as Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Reading in 1994. He is the author of several books, including Geology and Scenery in Ireland (1975), Geology and Scenery in Scotland (1977) and Disasters (1980), all published by Penguin, and is also author of Geology and Scenery in Britain. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, he was formerly Chairman of the School of Earth Sciences, University of Reading, and of the Landscape Research Group. He has also been consultant to English Nature, the Countryside Commission, the Forestry Commission, and has been associated with the planning of the National Trust's Enterprise Neptune (Saving the Coast) since its inception in 1965. He has recently co-operated with members of the Institution of Civil Engineers to produce Megacities: Reducing Vulnerability to Natural Disasters (1995) for the Overseas Development Administration, as a contribution to the United Nations' International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.