Blog 7: Who is a person/expert on your field that you admire?

 Hi everyone!!!

A very outstanding figure in Geography is Milton Santos, and he stands out not only in Latin America but also in the whole world, so today I will tell you a little about this great figure.

Milton Santos was a geographer and lawyer by profession. He was born on May 3, 1926 in Brotas de Macaúbas, state of Bahia in Brazil.  He studied Law at the University of Bahia and Geography at the University of Strasbourg, in France. In both institutions he held prominent positions.  He died on June 24, 2001, in Sao Paulo.

His reflections on the geographical discipline and on the social problems of the second half of the 20th century stand out for their originality, rigor and liveliness. Milton Santos wrote more than forty books, several of them with theoretical contributions in the field of Human Geography and Urbanism of great relevance. He was named Doctor Honoris Causa by more than 20 universities around the world.

His most famous work is "The Nature of Space" and also the one I have read and studied the most. In this work the author makes a decisive contribution by placing geographical space at the center of the debate on the dilemmas of contemporary society, where systems depend on each other.

Milton Santos' reading of the globalized world, which he described as a "perverse process", is very close to the social issues affecting our territories, such as social justice, sovereign decision, defense of the environment and the right to difference. For this reason, reading his work opens up new ways of understanding the world in which we live.