Charles Warren Thornthwaite was born in 1899, on a small farm outside of Pinconning, in central Michigan, the first of four children. His family realized that the only escape from the back-breaking farm work was through education, an understanding that drove Warren, as he preferred to be called, the rest of his life.
With no high school in Pinconning, Warren left home after grade school to attend high school and college in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. He graduated from Central Michigan Normal School (now Central Michigan University) in 1922 with a teacher’s certificate and accepted a job teaching high school in Owosso, Michigan. For two summers he registered for geography courses at the University of Michigan and was then persuaded to enter into the geography graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley under the guidance of Carl Sauer.
Upon finishing his dissertation research in 1927, Thornthwaite accepted a teaching position in the Department of Geography at the...
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Mather, J.R. (2005). Thornthwaite, Charles W. (1899–1963). In: Oliver, J.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of World Climatology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3266-8_205
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