Arthur Getis received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from The Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He is the co-author of several geography textbooks as well as two books dealing with map pattern analysis. He has also published widely in the areas of urban geography, spatial analysis, and geographical information systems. He is co-editor of Journal of Geographical Systems and for many years served on the editorial boards of Geographical Analysis and Papers in Regional Science. He has held administrative appointments at Rutgers University, the University of Illinois, and San Diego State University (SDSU) and currently holds the Birch Chair of Geographical Studies at SDSU. In 2002 he received the Association of American Geographers Distinguished Scholarship Award. Professor Getis is a member of many professional organizations and has served as an officer in, among others, the Western Regional Science Association and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

Judith Getis earned her B.A. and a teaching credential from the University of Michigan and her M.A. from Michigan State University. She has coauthored several geography textbooks and written the environmental handbook You Can Make a Difference. In addition to numerous articles in the fields of urban geography and geography education, she has written technical reports on topics such as solar power and coal gasification. She and her husband, Arthur Getis, were among the original unit authors of the High School Geography Project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Association of American Geographers. In addition, Mrs. Getis was employed by the Urban Studies Center at Rutgers University; taught at Rutgers; was a social science examiner at Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ; developed educational materials for Edcom Systems, Princeton, NJ; and was a professional associate in the Office of Energy Research, University of Illinois.

Jerome Fellmann received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. Except for visiting professorships at Wayne State University, the University of British Columbia, and California State University/Northridge, his professional career has been spent at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His teaching and research interests have been concentrated in the areas of human geography in general and urban and economic geography in particular, in geographic bibliography, the geography of Russia and the CIS, and geographic education. His varied interests have been reflected in articles published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Professional Geographer, Journal of Geography, the Geographical Review, and elsewhere. He is the co-author of McGraw-Hill's Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activity. In addition to teaching and research, he has held administrative appointments at the University of Illinois and served as a consultant to private corporations on matters of economic and community development.