Kenneth Pletcher
Kenneth Pletcher
Encyclopædia Britannica Editor
BIOGRAPHY

Ken Pletcher was Senior Editor, Geography and History for Encyclopædia Britannica. He holds an M.A. in Japanese studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As part of his master's program, he spent an academic year studying in Kobe, Japan. He also received a B.A. from the same institution in political science, with a minor in Asian studies. He worked at Britannica from 1979 to 2016, when he retired.

He edited The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations that Changed the Modern World and other books for the Britannica Educational Publishing imprint.

Primary Contributions (83)
Physical map of the South China Sea region highlighting the Spratly Islands and surrounding features. The map shows water depths with shaded blue gradients, labels major island groups such as the Spratly and Paracel Islands, and marks nearby countries including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. Key reefs, banks, and shoals are labeled in red, and a depth legend is included in the lower right corner.
Spratly Islands, large group of reefs, shoals, atolls, and small islets in the South China Sea of the Pacific Ocean. They are located north of insular Malaysia and are roughly midway between Vietnam and the Philippines, and they are claimed—wholly or in part—by several countries in the region. The…
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Publications (1)
The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations That Changed the Modern World
The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations That Changed the Modern World (December 2009)
By Kenneth Pletcher Senior Editor, Geography and History
The nature of the maiden voyage is deeply captivating. Though the oceans still hold vast opportunities for uncharted exploration, our land resources have been bravely explored and charted for hundreds of years. Very few places remain mysterious and untamable to man, and this transformation is due to imaginative and fearless explorers. Readers will devour these tales of explorers who have pushed geographic and personal boundaries, leaving virtually no corner of the globe off limits.