The Waldo Tobler Memorial Lecture Fund was established in honor of Waldo R. Tobler, professor of Geography at UC Santa Barbara for 41 years. Professor Tobler was an internationally renowned geographer and cartographer. Beginning in the 1960s, he introduced innovative methods based on digital technologies in geographic research that emphasized theory, mathematical modeling, and dynamic visualization. He is known for formulating the celebrated First Law of Geography, and for Tobler’s Hiking Function. He was the inventor of novel and unusual map projections, and of methods for the creation of area cartograms. Gifts to this endowed fund support open lectures in the fields of demography, mapping and cartography, and geographic information science in Tobler's name.