Oswald Rishbeth, from South Australian-German Rischbieths, founder of British academic geography

Oswald Rishbeth, raised in his Rischbieth family home, top right, in Wyatt Street, Mount Gambier (1860-1950), was working for the British army’s diplomatic corps (and Anglicising his name) during World War I when he married Kathleen Haddon in England in 1917 (at left). Their marriage as academics produced two more eminent academic sons (bottom right) John and Henry.

Oswald Henry Theodore Rishbeth (Rischbieth), from a South Australian-German family background, was considered the pioneer of academic geography in Britain.

Born as Oswald Rischbieth in 1886 in the South Australian southeast then-town of Mount Gambier, he was the son of Hanover-born merchant Heinrich Carl Rischbieth who was a partner in the Holtje and Rischbieth general store in Commercial Street. Heinrich’s brother Charles, who emigrated to South Australia, a few years earlier, became a prominent Adelaide businessman with G. & R. Willis and Co..

Oswald Rischbieth, who had five brothers and two sisters, was educated in the classics by high-church Anglican priest Hartley Williams who founded a boys’ high school in Doughty Street, Mount Gambier. Rischbieth continued his education at Kyre (later Scotch) College in Adelaide and, in 1905, won an essay contest run by the Mount Gambier Caledonian Society. After Kyre College, Rischbieth studied classics at Adelaide University, obtaining a first-class honors bachelor of arts degree in 1909.

He taught at Adelaide High School during 1910 before gaining a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied classics and geography at Merton College. At Oxford, he was "made an honorary post-master (i.e., scholar) of his college" and was elected to the Jowett Society, a philosophical discussion forum. 

Rischbieth had intended to study for a philosophy doctorate in Germany but this was blocked by World War I. Instead, during the war, he served as an intelligence officer in the British army’s diplomatic corps, anglicising his name to Rishbeth. He was posted to the Aegean Sea and involved in operations in and around the Dodecanese. 

Having studied Greek in Adelaide, Rishbeth was on the British delegation that went to Athens to induce King Constantine to join with the allies. As a result, in 1918, Rithbeth he was awarded the order of the knight of the saviour of the Greek Nation. The war introduced Rishbeth to geography and his move away from classics. Rishbeth had been involved in the geographical section of the naval intelligence division of the admiralty, describing parts of the world in handbooks later adapted to use in World War II.

After World War I, Rishbeth was attracted to geography "to construct a synthesis of the different fields of knowledge concerned with man/environment relationships." He taught geography at University College, Aberstwyst, and joined the faculty at Southampton University in 1922  and was the first chair and professor of historical geography, from 1926 to 1938.

Some of Rishbeth's early geography research was inspired by his military service. In 1919, Rishbeth presented research on the Dodecanese islands to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1920, he was invited by the Royal Geograhical Society to respond to a lecture on the Dodecanese by archeology academic John Myres together with Greece prime minister Eleftherios Venizoles This interest continued. Rishbeth's last paper was on the "corn supply of ancient Greece”.

Rithbeth was known for compiling geography textbooks used in Australian schools. He published research on the geography of central south England and Central Australia. In 1923, he published a new theory on the structure of the Earth.

Rishbeth was a founding member of the Institute of British geographers in 1933 and on the joint committee to form an Association of University Geographers.

In 1917, Rishbeth had married Kathleen Haddon, an Irish-born anthropologist and zoologist, in Cambridge. They had three children, including notable academics:  biologist John Rishbeth, an international authority on biological control of plant diseases, and physicist Henry Rishbeth, a leading researcher into the thermosphere and ionosphere.