Evelyn Pruitt
Evelyn Lord Pruitt was an American geographer. She was editor of The Professional Geographer, and is known for developing the field of remote sensing and coining the term "remote sensing".
Early life and education
Pruitt was born in San Francisco on April 25, 1918; her parents were Ethel Lord and Conrad Douglas Pruitt. She first became interested in geography while serving as the driver for a field trip with her older sister. She has a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She started work for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1942, and was the first woman to attain the rank of 'professional' in the organization.Career
Pruitt moved to working at the Office of Naval Research in 1948 where she first worked to establish research at Point Barrow, Alaska. She later became director of geographic programs at the Office of Naval Research where she worked on coastal erosion and helped advance the use of satellites to study the planet. Through this work Pruitt established a mechanism for distributing funds for research in the field. Pruitt started editing The Professional Geographer in 1957, a position she would hold for three years.Pruitt retired from the Office of Naval Research in 1973, by which time she was the highest ranking woman scientist in the United States Navy. She remained active after retirement, and in 1975, Pruitt served as chair of the Coastal Society's first conference, and in 1977 she served as the second president of the Coastal Society.
In the early 1960s, Pruitt realized that advances in science meant that aerial photography was no longer an adequate term to describe the new data streams being used to study the planet. With assistance from her fellow staff member at the Office of Naval Research, Walter Bailey, she coined the term "remote sensing" in an unpublished white paper. Pruitt then started work on what would become the first symposium on remote sensing in the environment to be held first at the University of Michigan, and at these meetings the use of the term remote sensing began to be more widely used. She later heralded remote sensing for its "fantastic potential for looking at the world".
She died of pneumonia on January 19, 2000.