Richard Chorley - Career Development

Career Development

In 1957, Chorley's academic career at Columbia, and subsequently Brown University, was interrupted by the need to return to Britain for family reasons. He was soon appointed a Demonstrator at Cambridge University and proceeded to move rapidly up the university hierarchy with a readership in 1970 and ad hominem chair in 1974. Cambridge provided the launching pad for Chorley's revolutionary ideas. He rejected the prevailing paradigm of the Davisian cycles of erosion and sought to replace these with a quantitative model-based paradigm with an emphasis on General Systems Theory and numerical modelling.

Cambridge contained a strong group in physical geography with colleagues that encouraged Chorley's ideas. It also provided a good environment for him to conduct his experiments. Chorley produced volumes of scientific papers in physical geography that codified his approach and allowed him to ask new questions about earth surface processes and ways they can be studied. Central to these was the concept of system dynamics, and his production of Physical Geography: A Systems Approach (1971) and Environmental Systems (1978) that influenced a generation of scholars. Chorley's studies ranged into climatology and hydrology where he cooperated with Colorado meteorologist Roger Barry on the text, Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (1968). Many of his writings were jointly authored or edited, including Water, Earth and Man (1969). In addition, Chorley launched in 1964 the first of a series of text on The History of the Study of Landforms. Two further volumes were published in 1973 and 1991. At the time of Chorley's death, Volume 4 was nearing completion.