Today's Google Doodle, featured on its homepage in Brazil, honors Milton Santos, a world-renowned Brazilian geographer widely celebrated for his pioneering work bridging geography and urbanization studies in developing countries. With a prolific career, Santos left a vast intellectual legacy, now compiled on a website created by his family. Organized into biographies, books, articles, research, and audiovisual materials, it keeps alive the legacy of this key figure in the fields of geography and urban studies.
Milton Santos is a fixture in the bibliographies of dissertations, theses, and research on cities in Brazil. Within the field of urban planning, his most significant books include Geografía y economía urbanas en los países subdesarrollados (1973); A cidade nos países subdesenvolvidos (1965); Pobreza urbana (1978); O espaço dividido - Os dois circuitos da economia urbana dos países subdesenvolvidos (1979); A urbanização desigual (1980); Manual de Geografia urbana (1981); Ensaios sobre a urbanização latino-americana (1982); O meio técnico-científico e a redefinição da urbanização brasileira (1986); O Período Técnico-Científico e os estudos geográficos: problemas da urbanização brasileira (1989); and A urbanização brasileira (1993).
After earning a Bachelor of Laws from the Federal University of Bahia in 1948 and a PhD in Geography from the Université de Strasbourg, France, in 1958, he began teaching in the late 1950s, shortly after completing his doctoral studies—a period that marked the beginning of his independent research career. Upon returning to Brazil, he established the Laboratory of Geomorphology and Regional Studies, maintaining strong ties with French scholars.
