Department of Geography

'Dr Hilda Ormsby died on October 23rd 1973, a few days before her 96th birthday. She was the country's longest living geographer, for she had been a student of and then assistant to Sir Halford Mackinder, one of the founders of modern geography, a former director of the School, and its first Professor of Geography. Indeed Mackinder tried out on her a draft of his famous book "Democratic Ideals and Reality."Mackinder's successor as Professor was Rodwell Jones, brother of Hilda Ormsby, and the brother-sister partnership is thought to have been the only one on a British department of geography. In 1931 she became one of the very few heography holders of the D.Sc (Econ) and was appointed Reader in 1932. Although she retired in 1940 she gave some lectures in the next two sessions whilst the School was in Cambridge. In both wars she served with Naval Intelligence. During the first she worked on terrain analysis, and in the second helped to prepare handbooks on France. She was elected an Honorary Fellow of the School in 1962...' R.J. Harrison Church, LSE Magazine, November 1974, No48, p14

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