Oscar Ferdinand Peschel (1826–75)

German geographer. Studied law and history at Heidelberg and Leipzig, 1845–8. Editor, Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, 1850. Chief editor at J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung in Augsburg, 1854. Director of the weekly geographical newspaper Das Ausland, 1854. First chair of the geography department, University of Leipzig, 1871. Introduced Darwinian concepts of change and distribution as analytical tools in geography.