| Summary: | The earliest observations upon cold, non‐glacial processes and phenomena were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the European explorers of the vast sub‐arctic regions of North America and Eurasia. The initial beginnings of periglacial geomorphology can be traced to Lozinski and the participants of the XI International Geological Congress excursion to Spitzbergen in 1910–11. The real growth in periglacial geomorphology occurred in the two decades after the Second World War. By the mid‐1960s periglacial geomorphology was recognized as a descriptive branch of climatic geomorphology. There were two broad sub‐categories: (i) Pleistocene and Quaternary studies dealing largely with the mid‐latitudes, and (ii) present‐day process studies conducted in the sub‐arctic and arctic regions of North America and Scandinavia. Permafrost studies were being conducted in relative isolation in North America and the Soviet Union, not only to each other, but also to mainstream periglacial geomorphology. The merging of all these interests, and the development of quantitative, process‐oriented studies aimed at understanding periglacial landforms did not come about for several more decades. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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