Dr. Brian Berry, professor emeritus of economic, political and policy sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas and a geographer renowned for his influential work in urban and regional research, died Jan. 2 at the age of 90.
Berry’s early spatial analytic research helped spark the scientific revolution that occurred in geography and urban studies in the 1960s, making him the world’s most frequently cited geographer for more than 25 years. Throughout his career he also focused on bridging theory and practice, and was heavily involved in urban and regional planning in both advanced and developing countries.
“Dr. Berry was a groundbreaking researcher and eminent educator,” said Dr. Inga H. Musselman, provost, vice president for academic affairs and the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair of Academic Leadership. “His distinguished career led to transformative improvements in city and regional planning and affected countless lives. His mentorship of hundreds of PhD students also has had an indelible effect. He will be greatly missed, both personally and professionally.”
Berry’s career, which spanned more than six decades, began in 1958 at the University of Chicago, where he was named the Irving B. Harris Professor of Urban Geography, chairman of geography and director of the Center for Urban Studies.
In 1975, Berry was the youngest social scientist ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He subsequently was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy.
In 1976, Berry joined Harvard University, where he was the Frank Backus Williams Professor of City and Regional Planning, chairman of the PhD program in urban planning, director of the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, professor of sociology, and faculty fellow of the Harvard Institute for International Development. In 1981, he left Harvard to become dean of what is now Heinz College and University Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, positions that he held until moving to UT Dallas in 1986.
“There is no way to overstate the impact he made on his areas of research and on the students he shepherded to PhDs and careers in the field. Brian’s passing is a great loss to the community and to his colleagues and friends, including me.”
Dr. Jennifer Holmes, dean of the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences
At UTD, Berry, a longtime leader of the political economy program and former Lloyd V. Berkner Professor of political science and of public policy and political economy, served as the first director of the Bruton Center for Development Studies, which he helped found, in 1989. In 2005, Berry became dean of what was then the School of Social Sciences before he engineered its transformation into the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (EPPS).
“As dean, Dr. Berry led us into a new age as we became the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences,” said Dr. Jennifer Holmes, EPPS dean and the current Lloyd V. Berkner Professor of political science and of public policy and political economy. “There is no way to overstate the impact he made on his areas of research and on the students he shepherded to PhDs and careers in the field. Brian’s passing is a great loss to the community and to his colleagues and friends, including me.”
Among his many accolades, Berry received the Victoria Medal, the Royal Geographical Society’s highest honor, in 1988, and the Vautrin Lud Prize — considered the “Nobel Prize for Geography” — in 2005. He also earned the Kondratieff Medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2017 and the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography from the American Association of Geographers in 2020.
Most recently, in 2021, Berry earned the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Research Award. The award recognized Berry’s early research on geographic information systems — specifically his conceptualization of the geographic matrix in 1964 — that continues to shape practice and to ensure conceptual and functional linkages between geographic information science technique and the field’s intellectual core.
Of all his accolades, however, Berry said in a 2021 interview that he is most proud of the students who have gone on to very successful careers.
“I have enjoyed most the mentorship of teaching,” he said. “I loved the excitement of being able to put discoveries to useful application. As a professor, one hopes to be creative and pass along a love of learning.”
A native of Sedgley, England, Berry wrote more than 500 books and articles. He graduated from University College London (UCL) with a Bachelor of Science in economics in 1955 and studied at the University of Washington (UW), where he completed a Master of Arts in 1956 and a PhD in 1958. In 1983, he was named a fellow of UCL, and in 2012, he was reaffirmed as Distinguished Alumnus of UW and elected a fellow of the Regional Science Association International.
Berry retired from UT Dallas in 2021.
