Jack Dangermond Awarded Coveted Carl Mannerfelt Medal at 2008 ESRI International User Conference
Redlands, California—The International Cartographic Association (ICA), the world’s authoritative body for cartography, presented ESRI president Jack Dangermond with its highest honor, the Carl Mannerfelt Medal, on Tuesday, August 5, at the 2008 ESRI International User Conference. The Mannerfelt Gold Medal was first awarded in 1980 and continues to recognize extraordinary merits in cartography including the conception, production, dissemination, and study of maps. Dangermond is only the eleventh recipient of the medal.
"Jack Dangermond is a unique and outstanding promoter of cartography, mapping, and geography," said Milan Konecny, immediate past-president, ICA. "He is able to bridge the gap between research ideas and the intentions of cartographers on one side and real practical needs of users from many different fields on the other."
Beginning as a small research group in 1969, ESRI has grown to an organization with 10 offices in the United States and 80 international distributors supporting users in 150 different countries. ESRI is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software. Under Dangermond’s direction, the company has pioneered innovative solutions for working with geographic data on computer desktops, across organizations, on the Internet, and in the field using handheld mobile technology. A graduate of the Harvard School of Design, Dangermond holds six honorary doctorates from universities around the world.
Dangermond was presented with the Mannerfelt Medal for his development of new cartographic tools, the creation of digital atlases, and his promotion of cartography. The use of maps and GIS to assist in many areas of human activities, ranging from crisis management in disasters such as the recent cyclone in Myanmar to issues of health and geography, is especially innovative. Recent activities distributing and sharing knowledge and capacity building through fundamental projects include:
• United Nations (UN) Global Mapping—Providing opportunities for young users to become part of the development of cartography through grants awarded to those working with cartography in solving problems in the contemporary world
• Highlighting and promoting, together with ICA, the best drawings from the Barbara Petchenik Contest in the book Children Map the World: Selections from the Barbara Petchenik Children’s World Map Competition
• Publishing classic cartography books, such as Eduard Imhoff’s Cartographic Relief Presentation, which help share the ideas of cartographers from around the world
"Jack Dangermond is a pioneer defining and delimiting the use of cartography and geographic information in support of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and the creation of a true knowledge-based society," stated Konecny.
About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.