Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Thrower, Norman J. W. (Norman Joseph William)
- Abstract:
- Norman Thrower was a professor in UCLA's geography department from 1957 to 1990, where he specialized in cartography, remote sensing, and Europe. He was the director of the (Columbus) Quincentenary Programs at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the director of the Clark Library at UCLA. The collection consists of lecture notes and pamphlets on the 1986 Halley's Comet and the subsequent Newton-Halley volume, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (1990), which Thrower produced with colleagues, along with relevant correspondence.
- Extent:
- 0.4 Linear Feet (1 box)
- Language:
- Materials are primarily in English, some materials in French.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Norman Thrower Papers (Collection 2344). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The records span from 1979 to 1989 and mostly consist of lecture notes and pamphlets on Halley's Comet from 1986 and the subsequent Newton-Halley volume, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (1990), which Thrower produced with colleagues, along with relevant correspondence.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Normal Thrower was born in England in 1919. He served in India during World War II and afterwards he joined the Directorate of Colonial (later Overseas) Surveys. Desiring an academic background, he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in geography at the University of Virginia in 1953. He then earned his Ph.D. degree in geography in 1958 at the University of Wisconsin. His dissertation concerned cadastral survey systems, used to establish legal property boundaries, and it was later published by the Association of American Geographers as Original Survey and Land Subdivision: A Comparative Study of the Form and Effect of Contrasting Cadastral Surveys (1966).
Thrower joined the UCLA Department of Geography in 1957, where he specialized in cartography, remote sensing, and Europe. His research focused on the contemporary and historical aspects of cartography, including studies of orthophotomapping and Iandmark maps. He is the author and editor of several books: Maps and Man (1972), enlarged as Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society (1996), published by the University of Chicago Press; The Complete Plattmaker: Essays on Chart, Map, and Globe Making in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1978); The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the 'Paramore', 1698-1701 (1981), published by the Hakluyt Society; Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyages, 1577-1580 (1984); A Leaf From the 1619 French Edition of the Mercator-Hondius World Atlas (1985); Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (1990); and A Buccaneer's Atlas: Basil Ringrose's South Seas Waggoner (with Derek Howse) (1992).
From 1989 to 1992, Thrower was the director of the (Columbus) Quincentenary Programs at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. From 1981 to 1987, he served as the director of the Clark Library at UCLA and the UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies was founded during his tenure. He was also the president of The Society for the History of Discoveries from 1973 to 1975, and in 1979, he was the founding president of the California Map Society. He retired from UCLA in 1990; however, he still teaches geography courses at UCLA.
- Acquisition information:
- Gift of Norman Thrower, 2001.
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Kuhelika Ghosh under the supervision of Courtney Dean in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), 2017.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.
- Arrangement:
-
Following Halley's Comet materials, collection is arranged by collaborator. Folders retain original titles.
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Norman Thrower Papers (Collection 2344). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988