Peschel, Oskar

Born Mar. 17, 1826, in Dresden; died Aug. 31, 1875, in Leipzig. German geographer.

From 1854 to 1871, Peschel edited the journal Das Ausland, which played a major role in disseminating information about geography throughout Germany. He was a professor at the University of Leipzig from 1871 to 1875. Peschel’s principal works dealt with general geography and the history of earth science, and his analysis of landforms contributed to the development of geomorphology. Peschel studied causal relations in nature by the comparative method, which he greatly enriched in his comparative use of topographical maps. However, he oversimplified the method, for example, by basing his analysis of the origin and classification of individual landforms on configuration and morphometric data alone.