Academic studied geography in art

Denis Cosgrove, 59, a cultural geographer who held the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Geography at UCLA and encouraged the study of his discipline within the humanities, died March 21 of stomach cancer at his home in Los Angeles, UCLA announced on its website.

Cosgrove studied the connection between art and its representation of geography. Landscape and how it is viewed through the lens of art history, architecture and design formed the basis of much of his writing. His 2001 book “Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination” collected images and maps from classical antiquity through the 21st century and reflected on the continuing need humans have to represent the world they live in.

Born in Liverpool, England, on May 3, 1948, Cosgrove earned a bachelor’s degree in geography at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford in 1969. He received his master’s degree in geography at the University of Toronto in 1971 before returning to Oxford for his doctorate in 1977. He taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, before arriving at UCLA in 2000.