Peter Haggett was born on January 24, 1933 in Somerset, England. He attended Cambridge University throughout the 1950’s, and he graduated with bachelors, masters, and two doctorates (PhD and DSc). He also holds six honorary degrees from universities around the world in Law and in Science. His studies centered around Urban and Regional Geography, and it wasn’t until 1968 that he became interested in disease geography. His interest stemmed from his attendance of a seminar at the World Health Organization in Geneva, which he attended as a substitute for Professor Brian Barry. He went on to dedicate the latter half of his career to studying geographical epidemiology and infectious diseases, and he retired in 1995.
During the thirty years he spent at the front of the classroom, Haggett taught at many institutions. These include his alumni Cambridge, and he appeared as a guest instructor at schools across North America. He also received gold medals from both the Royal Geographical Society and the American Geographical Society, the Anders Retzius medal in Sweden, the Vautrid Lud Prize in France, and the Laureat d’Honneur by the International Geographical Union.
Peter Haggett 