Jean Gottman (October 10, 1915-February 18, 1994) was a French geographer who was most widely known for coining the term megalopolis to describe the condition of the Boston-Washington corridor. He was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, though at the time it was a part of the Russian Empire. Gottman started out as a research assistant in human geography at the Sorbonne (1937–41) but eventually went on to become the director of the school of geography at Oxford University.