Pandi Geço

Pandi Geço (1913–1994) was an Albanian geographer. He was best known for his unique regionalization of Albania into four physical-geographic regions, a regionalization proposed for the first time by him and still used today. He was also the author of the first Albanian academic textbooks of geography. Pandi Geço was born in Korçë, Albania in 1913, the only son of Niko Geço and Katerina Ballauri. He received his primary education in his hometown, Korçë, where he continued his secondary and tertiary education in French language at the Albanian National Lyceum. In 1935 he completed his studies in the Lyceum and went to study geography in Paris, France. He graduated from the University of Sorbonne in 1940 and that same year returned to his hometown in Albania, where was appointed pedagogue at the same Lyceum at which he had studied. Eventually he moved to Tirana and from 1948 until 1951 he worked in the first post-war Albanian scientific institution, the Institute of Studies (Instituti i Studimeve), later called the Institute of Sciences (Instituti i Shkencave). In 1951 he moved into the academic didactic system as professor of geography at the High Pedagogical Institute of Tirana. From 1956–1959 he was a member of the Department of Geodesy in the Faculty of Civic Engineering. Between the years 1959–1965 Geço was chief of the Department of Geography of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Tirana and gave lectures until 1974, the year he retired from teaching. He also conducted scientific research and published several articles concerning the regionalization of Albania, climatology, demographics, urban geography, and economic geography. Of particular importance is his study Contemplations on the geographical regionalization of Albania (Mendime për rajonizimin gjeografik të Shqipërisë), where, for the first time, Pandi proposed a unique geographical regionalization of Albania, based on the concepts of integral geography.