Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928, Schwartzberg received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1960. He has since taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1960-64), the University of Minnesota (1964-2000) and Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi (1979-80). His academic specialties are the geography of South Asia, political geography, and the history of cartography. He is best known as the editor and principal author of the monumental and highly innovative Historical Atlas of South Asia (University of Chicago Press, 1978 and Oxford University Press, 1992). This work won the Watumull Prize of the American Historical Association and a distinguished achievement award from the Association of American Geographers. Among his other books are Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies and Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, Vol. II, Books 1 and 2 respectively of The History of Cartography (University of Chicago Press, 1992 and 1994), of both of which he was principal author and associate editor. The former was voted the best academic publication of the year by the Association of American Publishers. He is also co-author of The Kashmir Dispute at Fifty: Charting New Paths to Peace and author of Kashmir: A Way Forward, published in 1997 and 2000 respectively by the Kashmir Study Group, an influential think-tank that he helped form in 1996. Schwartzberg has also done pioneering research on the geography of the Indian caste system during two years of field work during which he bicycled over 10,000 miles throughout India and conducted interviews, with the help of Indian assistants, in about 325 villages. He has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and as a consultant on South Asia to numerous publishers, Granada TV (UK) and several government agencies in the United States and India.
After 32 months of military service during the Korean War (final rank of 1st lieutenant) Schwartzberg spent an equal time backpacking throughout Europe, and much of North Africa and Asia. He has since extended his travels considerably, having now visited about a hundred countries in all. He has lived in India (five years), Germany, France, and Spain; and is multi-lingual. He participated in various Peace Corps training programs (directing the first such program for Ceylon), and also directed the Minnesota Studies in International Development, an overseas internship program of the University of Minnesota. He has served as Chair of Minnesota’s Department of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, as a Trustee and member of the Executive Council of the American Institute of Indian Studies, as an elected member and Secretary of the US National Committee of the International Geographical Union, and as a national Board member and president of the Minnesota Chapter of the World Federalist Association.
A life-long peace activist, Schwartzberg has a particular interest in the United Nations system and has written numerous articles relating to it, especially in regard to UN reform, in Global Governance and other journals. He has also completed a manuscript of roughly 600 pages of a book entitled Designs for a Workable World, in which two prestigious publishers have expressed an interest. He served on the Board of Directors of the World Federalist Association, has chaired its Policy and Issues Commission, and is presently President of the Minnesota Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS). He was a co-founder in 1996 of the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, a coalition of now comprising 47 peace and justice organizations, and serves on its Executive Committee. He presently serves on the Council of the World Federalist Movement, on the Board of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, and as a Fellow of the World Federalist Institute, a CGS think-tank. In 2010 he was named a "Distinguished International Emeritus Professor" of the University of Minnesota.
