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De Martonne’s Traite has been the cornerstone of physical geography, and particularly geomorphology, as taught in France and the French-speaking world. Whether to be emulated or criticised, this magnum opus has influenced almost a century of research in francophone physical geography. De Martonne’s French and international career also helped to provide the Traite with a worldwide audience. Here we unravel the successive stages of elaboration and rewriting of the Traite and show how its successive editions connect with its author’s own scientific trajectory. The spectrum of physical geography embraced in each edition ranges from hydrography to geomorphology, climatology and biogeography, and one of de Martonne’s key distinctions is his construction for geography of a wide vocabulary base that blended scientific jargon with a treasury of vernacular idioms from around the world. Between 1909 and 19251927, the search for causes, the measurement of spatial extent, and a concern for generalization were the key scientific goals that helped de Martonne progress towards a more precise typology of geographical objects,facts and phenomena. This eventually resulted in more accurate and coherent classification schemes for landforms, climates, rivers and plant formations than had ever been produced. The volume devoted to geomorphology (Le relief du sol) is a moderately critical endorsement of Davisian theory, where the tenets of ’normal’(i.e. fluvial) geomorphology are constantly moderated by a concern for climate, biogeographic variability and geological context as factors of landform diversity. De Martonne contributed substantially to the knowledge of desert and glacial geomorphology, the latter mainly in Alpine settings. However, the only specifically geographic theory to be found underpinning his Traite remains Davis’s theory of the erosion cycle. The Traite otherwise draws heavily upon the physical and biological sciences to provide hypotheses and scientific laws likely to explain Earth surface patterns and processes. Overall, de Martonne’s physical geography blends a strong concern for typology, i.e. an idiographic penchant for case studies reflected in the 494 figures of the 1925-1927 edition, with an equally strong concern for generalisation, i.e. a nomothetic drive to define geographic laws. This is expressed through the production of several synthetic world maps of Earth surface patterns.