Awards

National Academies - 1951

American Association for the Advancement of Science

About Otis Starkey

Otis Starkey was born April 14, 1906 and he grew up on the East Coast. He graduated high school in Brooklyn and received his B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in 1927, 1930, and 1939 respectively. His teaching career began just after college, at Washington and Jefferson College (1927-28). From there he went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he maintained an affiliation through 1946. However, during the war years he served with Military Intelligence Service of the War Department (1942-45) and with the State Department (1945-46). For his military service, he received a Meritorious Civilian Award from the Office of the Chief of Staff.

Otis Starkey was professor of geography at Indiana University for 24 years from 1946 until he retired in 1970. He was one of the co-authors of Introductory Economic Geography, which was the most widely used geography text in the United States at the time. Indiana University created the new geography department in 1946 by separating the Department of Geology and Geography and selected Otis Starkey as its first chairperson. He served in that capacity through 1956 and guided the department to a position of national prominence. During his two and a half decades at the university, he continued his lifelong interests in economic geography and the two regions of Anglo-American and Caribbean Latin America. He served on the university's Latin American Studies Committee.

He was President of the American Society of Professional Geographers and President of the Geography Section of the Indiana State Teachers' Association. His last book, The Anglo-American Realm, a regional geography of the United States and Canada, published by McGraw-Hill in 1969, has been a major contribution to the geography of this region. Professor Starkey had a lifelong interest in the Caribbean Basin, particularly the economic geography of the Lesser Antilles. This interest, aided by extensive research including numerous field experiences between 1932 and 1984, led him to produce many professional monographs, articles, papers, and numerous public lectures on the area. His Ph.D. dissertation, The Economic Geography of Barbados, was published by Columbia University Press in 1939 and republished by the Negro Universities Press in 1971. He was the principal investigator for an Office of Naval Research project, 1958-62, on the islands of the eastern British Caribbean. This work generated a series of twelve monographs on the economic geographic conditions of twelve different islands and island groups including St. Lucia, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, and Barbados. In addition, he wrote many articles on a variety of aspects of the geography of the Lesser Antilles which were published in Economic Geography, Journal of Geography, and other professional and popular journals.

Following retirement from Indiana University, Starkey became affiliated with the California State Polytechnic University at Pomona for four years (1971-75), and then at California State University at San Bernardino from 1975-76. Starkey passed away January 27, 1986.