Johannes Gabriel Granö

Johannes Gabriel Granö (1882-1956) was a Finnish geographer, chiefly remembered as an professor of three universities and an explorer of Siberia and Mongolia. He is also noted for his pioneering studies on landscape geography, and his book Pure Geography. Granö was a professor in universities of Tartu, Helsinki and Turku.
Granö studied in Helsinki University, starting 1900 in botany but changing his major subject to geography. His minor subjects were biology and geology. As a young student he spent his vacations in Siberia, where his father worked as the priest for the Finnish population in Omsk 1901-1913. Grand took notes of the environment and his first scientific publication, published 1905 in "Fennia" was about the Finnish colonies in Siberia.
Granö got stipendiums from the Fenno-Ugrian Society and executed three exploration trips to Northern Mongolia, Altai Mountains and Sayan Mountains in 1906, 1907 and 1909. His research focused gradually in effects of ice age in morphology of the mountains.
Granö became a professor in the newly founded University of Tartu in 1919. He founded the department and organised teaching in Estonian language. in 1923 he was invited back to Helsinki University to be a professor and the editor of Atlas of Finland. He was soon asked to move to Turku where they had founded a Finnish university. There he even had time for his own research.
Granö developed the concept of "pure geography" as the unique subject of geographical research. He created a working methodology to define and classify landscapes, not only based on geomorphology but also taking into account bodies of water, vegetation and human impact.
Granö published a lot of his works in German, and thus he is best known in German-speaking areas. Only during First World War he published something in French.
Photographs taken by Granö in connection with his fieldwork in the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, among colonies of Finnish settlers in Siberia, on the steppes of Western Siberia and in Mongolia, particularly with the purpose of studying the inhabitants of these areas, have been donated to the Finnish Literature Society and a selection of them was featured in an exhibition in Helsinki City Art Museum in 2002.

Notable publications

• Pure Geography, 1929, translation in English 1997
• Altai I-II, 1919-1921, with photographs by the author, republished in 1993. Translations in Swedish and Russian.
• Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Eiszeit in der nordwestlichen Mongolei und einigen ihrer südsibirischen Grenzgebirge (doctors thesis 1910)
• Die Nordwest-Mongolei (in "Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde", 1912)
• Morphologische Forschungen im östlichen Altai (in "Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde", 1914)
• Les formes du relief dans l'Altai russe et leur genése (in "Fennia" 1917)
• Die landschaftlischen Einheiten Estlands (1922)
• Die geographischen Gebiete Finnlands (1931)
• Mongolische Landschaften und Örtlichkeiten (1941)
• Das Formengebäude des nord-östlischen Altai (1945)

• Granö, J.G. (1929). Pure geography. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0801855917. 
• Granö, J.G. (1921). Altai – vaellusvuosina nähtyä ja elettyä [Altai - as seen and experienced during my years of exploration]. WSOY. 

Awards and honours

Asteroid 1451 Granö was named after Granö.

The co-operation centre of the University of Turku and the University of Tartu is called named Granö Centre after J. G. Granö, former Rector of Turku University and Professor of Geography at the University of Tartu.