One Hundred

We received notice from Professor-Emeritus Ron Mellor, president of the UCLA Emeriti Association, that Professor-Emeritus Norman Thrower had reached his 100th birthday. The Emeriti Association sent Prof. Thrower the following note:

The Executive Board of the UCLA Emeriti Association would like to extend to you on behalf of all Emeriti and Emeritae our warmest congratulations on your One Hundredth Birthday. We want to acknowledge your contributions to UCLA over many decades as a teacher of geography and cartography, a scholar of exploration and Sir Francis Drake, and as an administrator, notably as Director of the Clark Library. Your emeriti colleagues wish you many more birthdays and good health and happiness in retirement.

Prof. Thrower's academic papers are in the UCLA library and the following information can be found about them:

Norman Thrower was a professor in UCLA’s geography department from 1957 to 1990, where he specialized in cartography, remote sensing, and Europe. He was the director of the (Columbus) Quincentenary Programs at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the director of the Clark Library at UCLA. The collection consists of lecture notes and pamphlets on the 1986 Halley’s Comet and the subsequent Newton-Halley volume, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (1990), which Thrower produced with colleagues, along with relevant correspondence.

Normal Thrower was born in England in 1919. He served in India during World War II and afterwards he joined the Directorate of Colonial (later Overseas) Surveys. Desiring an academic background, he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in geography at the University of Virginia in 1953. He then earned his Ph.D. degree in geography in 1958 at the University of Wisconsin. His dissertation concerned cadastral survey systems, used to establish legal property boundaries, and it was later published by the Association of American Geographers as Original Survey and Land Subdivision: A Comparative Study of the Form and Effect of Contrasting Cadastral Surveys (1966).

Source: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8tb1d2n/

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Yours truly would be remiss if he didn't point out that the Emeriti Association's board contains another 100+ citizen of UCLA:

Toshi Ashikaga*

who administers the lending library known as the Book Exchange that you may be familiar with in the Faculty Center. As we noted in a prior post, in this centennial year of UCLA, she can point out that she is older than the university.

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2018/10/before-you-get-carried-away-by-uclas.html

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*Toshi Ashikaga is the surviving spouse of Professor Emeritus Ensho Ashikaga of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Toshi has served the Emeriti Assn. as the chair of the Book Exchange Committee from 2009 until the present time. In this position she records new books received and re-shelves those that are returned on a weekly basis. Annually, Toshi and several other volunteers cull books that are not in heavy use (usually 200 or more books) in order to make room for others.

Source: https://emeriti.errc.ucla.edu/Emeriti-Association-Awards