Ian Simmons

Ian Gordon Simmons ( born January 22, 1937) is a British geographer who taught until his retirement from the University of Durham, England. He has by his contributions to environmental history also significant merits for prehistoric archeology.

His research interests include long-term environmental consequences of human intervention. A key issue for him is doing the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic in England and the impact of Neolithization on today's landscape. A particular example is his 1993 published introduction to environmental history.

Simmons was chairman of the Environmental Working Group of the Institute of British Geographers. He was elected member of the Academia Europaea and 1997 elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994, 1998 was awarded the Medal of the Royal Geographical Society Victora. In 2005, the University of Aberdeen awarded him an honorary doctorate degree ( D.Sc. ).

Publications (selection )

• Environmental History. New Perspectives on the Past. Oxford 1993
• An environmental history of Great Britain. Edinburgh 2001
• With M. Tooley: The Environment in British Prehistory. Ithaca 1981