GOTTMAN, JEAN

born Oct. 10, 1915, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Kharkiv, Ukraine] died Feb. 28, 1994, Oxford, Eng. in full Jean-iona Gottman French geographer who introduced the concept and term megalopolis for large urban configurations. A research assistant in human geography at the Sorbonne (1937-41), Gottman was consultant to the Foreign Economic Administration in Washington, D.C. (1942-44), and taught at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (1943-48), and the University of Paris (1948-56). He was research director (1956-61) of the Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., a public affairs foundation, and served as director of the cole Pratique des Hautes tudes (1960-84). In 1968 he became professor of geography at the University of Oxford. His writings include A Geography of Europe (1950), Megalopolis: The Urbanized Seaboard of the United States (1961), and Megalopolis Revisited (1987).