Andrew John Herbertson

He was born in Galashiels, Selkirkshire[1] to parents Andrew Hunter Herbertson and Janet Matthewson.[2] He went to school locally at Galashiels Academy and in Edinburgh at Edinburgh Institution.[2] From 1886 to 1889 he studied in the University of Edinburgh, but he never gained a degree. He then gained a place at Oxford University where he graduated MA.[3]

In 1892, he was appointed to assist Patrick Geddes with the teaching of botany at University College, Dundee. in 1892 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He then moved in 1892 to Fort William, Scotland to work on a metereological observatory on Ben Nevis. In 1894 he moved to Manchester to become a lecturer in political and commercial geography in the University of Manchester.

From 1896 to 1899, he lectured in industrial and commercial geography at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh.[4] In 1896 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Peter Guthrie Tait, Sir John Murray, Ralph Copeland and Alexander Buchan.[3]

In 1898, he received a doctorate (PhD) from University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. In 1899 he moved to the University of Oxford to become a reader of geography; then became the first Oxford Professor of Geography in 1905. He would become head of the geography department at Oxford in 1910. In 1908 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.

He died of a heart attack in Radnage, Buckinghamshire. He is buried with his wife Frances Dorothy (who died two weeks later) in Holywell Cemetery nearby.[4]

Their son, Lt. Andrew Hunter Herbertson, was killed at Arras in the First World War in May 1917.[5]