Élisée Reclus

Jacques Élisée Reclus, a prominent French geographer, writer, and anarchist, spent almost two decades (1875-1894) producing his renowned 19-volume masterpiece, La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes ("Universal Geography"). Despite being exiled from France because of his political activism, he was still awarded the Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society in 1892 for this remarkable work.