Jack Dangermond

Jack Dangermond is an American business executive and environmental scientist. In 1969, he co-founded with his wife Laura the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), a privately held Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software company. Dangermond ranks 554 on the Forbes list of the World's Billionaires.^[1]

Dangermond is the company's President and Founder, and he works out of Esri's headquarters in Redlands, California. Dangermond founded Esri to perform land use analysis; however, its focus evolved into GIS software development, highlighted by the release of ARC/INFO in the early 1980s; the development and marketing of ARC/INFO positioned Esri with the dominant market share among GIS software developers. Today Esri is the largest GIS software developer in the world and its flagship product, ArcGIS, traces its heritage to Dangermond's initial efforts in developing ARC/INFO.

Jack Dangermond speaking at Harvard, 2006

Early life and education

Jack Dangermond grew up in Redlands, California, as the son of Dutch immigrants.^[2] His parents owned a plant nursery in Redlands.^[3] Dangermond attended Redlands High School

Dangermond completed his undergraduate work at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), studying landscape architecture and environmental science.^[3][4] He then earned a Master of Architecture degree in Urban Planning from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design GSD in 1969.^[3] His early work in the school's Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis (LCGSA) led directly to the development of Esri's ARC/INFO GIS software. He has been awarded 13 honorary doctoral degrees from universities around the world.

Awards and honors

Dangermond has had a strong impact on the development of GIS methodologies, the GIS software market, GIS technology research and related analytical methods. He has received many awards reflecting the influence of his work, including:

• Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society
• EDUCAUSE Medal of EduCause
• Horwood Award of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association
• Anderson Medal of the Association of American Geographers
• John Wesley Powell Award of the U.S. Geological Survey.
• Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal of the International Cartographic Association
• Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2010.^[5]
• Alexander Graham Bell Medal of the National Geographic Society in 2010, together with Roger Tomlinson.^[6][7]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jack Dangermond.

• Cultivating His Plants, and His Company, The New York Times, 2011
• Fact-Checking 'Corner Office', The Atlantic, 2011
• A Sense of Where You Are, Forbes.com, 2010
• Mapmaker Follows His Own Path (PDF), Financial Times, 2010
• The Passion and the Perseverance to Succeed, The Washington Post, 2010
• Computerworld Interview Q&A: Esri's Jack Dangermond on Cloud, Big Data and Apple-vs-Google Map Wars (July 2012)
• New York Times Corner Office Cultivating His Plants, and His Company (July 2011)
• Investor's Business Daily article Jack Dangermond’s Digital Mapping Lays It All Out (August 2009)
• Jack Dangermond, Esri President - Biographical information on Esri's Web site
• Biography - Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS) Advisory Board members