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Donald Meinig, born November 1, 1924 in Palouse, Washington, is best known for his work as a geographer. He earned a degree in foreign service at Georgetown University, and proceeded to earn graduate degrees in geography from the University of Washington in 1950 and 1953. He held a faculty position at the University of Utah from 1950 to 1958, when he left for the University of Adelaide in Australia. In 1960 he took a position at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, where he worked as the chairman of the geography department until his retirement in 2004. He has produced many publications throughout his career, with his most highly regarded work being his four volume series "The Shaping of America," which focuses on historical, regional, cultural, and social geographies of American land. For his work, he has been recognized as a Fulbright Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, along with earning the Charles P. Daly Medal from the American Geographical Society, an honorary doctorate from the Maxwell School at Syracuse, and being lauded for "Meritorious Contribution to the Field of Geography" from the Association of American Geographers.