Eugeniusz Romer

Who was Eugeniusz Romer?

Eugeniusz Mikołaj Romer was a distinguished Polish geographer, cartographer and geopolitician, whose maps and atlases are still highly valued by Polish experts.

Born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, he graduated from a high school in Nowy Sącz and studied history, geology, geography and meteorology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, also attending courses in Lwów and Halle. In 1894, Romer earned a doctorate in philosophy at Lwów University.

In final years of the 19th century, he went to Vienna and Berlin to broaden his knowledge of glaciology, geology and meteorology. Romer also went to Lausanne, to study tectonics and morphology. In 1911 he became professor of Lwów University, later he was named professor honoris causa at the universities in Lwów, Poznań and Kraków. In 1952 he became a member of Polish Academy of Sciences

In 1909 Romer went to Switzerland, to study Alpine glaciers. Next year, he traveled to Asia, and in 1913 to Alaska, to the Saint Elias Mountains. In 1916, while in Vienna, Romer started work on the Great Statistical and Geographical Atlas of Poland. This atlas, published in Vienna in 1916, was crucial with establishing borders of the Second Polish Republic. He was a member of the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, helping with drawing western border of Poland. A second edition of his Atlas was published in Lwów and Warsaw in 1921.