Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 21, 2012

Sir Patrick Geddes FRSE (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner (see List of urban theorists). He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology. He was responsible for introducing the concept of "region" to architecture and planning and is also known to have coined the term "conurbation". An energetic Francophile, Geddes was the founder of the Collège des Écossais (Scots College) an international teaching establishment in Montpellier, France.

The son of Janet Stevenson and soldier Alexander Geddes, Patrick Geddes was born in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, and educated at Perth Academy. He studied at the Royal College of Mines in London under Thomas Henry Huxley between 1874 and 1878, and lectured in Zoology at Edinburgh University from 1880 to 1888. Geddes wrote with J. Arthur Thomson an early book on sexology, The Evolution of Sex (1889). He held the Chair of Botany at University College Dundee from 1888 to 1919, and the Chair of Sociology at the University of Bombay from 1919 to 1924. While he thought of himself primarily as a sociologist, it was his commitment to close social observation and ability to turn these into practical solutions for city design and improvement that earned him a ‘revered place amongst the founding fathers of the British town planning movement’. He was knighted in 1932, shortly before his death in Montpellier, France on 17 April 1932.