Jack Dangermond (born 1945) is an American billionaire businessman and environmental scientist, who in 1969 co-founded, with Laura Dangermond, the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), a privately held geographic information systems (GIS) software company.^[1] As of July 2023, his net worth was estimated at US$9.3 billion.^[2]

Dangermond, Esri's president, works at its headquarters in Redlands, California. He founded the company to perform land-use analysis; however, its focus evolved into GIS-software development, highlighted by the release of ARC/INFO in the early 1980s. The development and marketing of ARC/INFO positioned Esri with the dominant market share among GIS-software developers. Esri's flagship product, ArcGIS, traces its heritage to Dangermond's initial efforts in developing ARC/INFO.

Dangermond grew up in Redlands, the son of Dutch immigrants.^[3] His parents owned a plant nursery in the town.^[4] Dangermond attended Redlands High School.

Dangermond completed his undergraduate degree in landscape architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.^[4][5] He then earned a Master in Urban Planning from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1969.^[4] His early work in the school's Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis (LCGSA) led directly to the development of Esri's ARC/INFO GIS software. He has been awarded 13 honorary doctoral degrees.

In December 2017, Jack and Laura Dangermond donated $165 million to establish the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve on the Pacific coast—the largest ever gift to The Nature Conservancy.^[6][7]

Jack and Laura Dangermond have signed The Giving Pledge.^[8]

In January 2020, Jack and Laura Dangermond donated $3 million to the Museum of Redlands fund.^[9]

In 2005, Jack helped Duane Marble establish the American Association of Geographers Marble Fund for Geographic Science.^[10] This fund serves to advance GIScience education by providing awards to undergraduate and graduate student research.^[10] These awards include the "Marble-Boyle Undergraduate Achievement Award," "William L. Garrison Award for Best Dissertation in Computational Geography," and the "Marble Fund Award for Innovative Master's Research in Quantitative Geography."^[11][12][13]

Dangermond has received many awards, including:

• Officier in de Orde van Oranje Nassau ^[14]
• Horwood Distinguished Service Award of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association in 1988^[15]
• John Wesley Powell Award of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1996
• Anderson Medal of the Association of American Geographers in 1998^[16]
• Cullum Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society in 1999
• EDUCAUSE Medal of EduCause
• Honorary doctorate from the University of West-Hungary in 2003
• Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal of the International Cartographic Association in 2007
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 2008^[17]
• Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2010.^[18]
• Alexander Graham Bell Medal of the National Geographic Society in 2010, together with Roger Tomlinson.^[19][20]
• Fellow of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science in 2012^[21]
• Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (Champions of the Earth) in 2013.^[22]
• Audubon Medal of the National Audubon Society in 2015^[23][24]

• Geographic information science – scientific discipline that studies the techniques to capture, represent, process, and analyze geographic informationPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• Michael Frank Goodchild – British-American geographer
• National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
• Technical geography – Study of using and creating tools to manage spatial information
  • Qualitative geography – Subfield of geographic methods
  • Quantitative geography – Subfield of geographic methods
• University Consortium for Geographic Information Science