Welsh Journals

SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF E.G. BOWEN AND THE MEMORIAL CONFERENCE. Held at The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth May 15 17,1985 The papers in these three special issues of Cambria, Volume 12 (1 and 2) and Volume 13 (1), were those offered by a group of human geographers in a conference to honour the memory of a remarkable and much loved man: Professor Emrys George Bowen, Gregynog Professor of Geography at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth from 1946 68, and Emeritus Professor after that date. He died in November 1983 a few weeks short of his 83rd birthday, researching and lecturing to the end. The contributors are mainly academic human geographers at universities throughout Britain. They draw their association with Bowen from being former students at U.C.W. Aberystwyth, past colleagues in the Department or in sister Geography Departments within the University of Wales: these linkages were also characteristic of the majority of other participants at the meeting held in Aberystwyth between 15-17* May 1985. The intellectual heritage of Professor Bowen, or E.G.B. as he was universally known to his former students and colleagues, was closely associated with the work of Professor Herbert John Fleure, the initial holder of the Chair of Geography and Anthropology in Aberystwyth incidentally the first, or one of the first, given Liverpool's claims, to establish a Geography Honours programme in British universities soon after World War I. His subsequent career and academic approaches have already been described in detail elsewhere, in the introduction to a collection of essays commemorating his 75* birthday (Carter and Davies 1975), and is also the subject of the first essay in this volume (Thomas 1985 p. 15-31). So such issues need not be dealt with in detail here. What is more relevant for this introduction is an explanation of the more personal reasons why a group of human geographers wished to assemble in Aberystwyth to honour the contributions of such a man. The basic reason is, of course, one of affection and academic respect for the memory of a geographer who did so much for his subject, his college and also for us all, through his stimulating teaching, research and guidance. During his years in Aber as a student, lecturer and professor he became a virtual legend in his time. Even as a grammar school student in Pontypridd I had often heard about E.G.B. and the Fleure tradition from my teacher George Mort incidentally a classmate of E.G.B.! More generally, whenever a group of Bowen's ex-students got together at a conference there was little doubt they