Walter Isard, 91, a pioneer in study of regional science

Walter Isard, 91, of Drexel Hill, an economist and regional scientist, died of heart failure Saturday, Nov. 6, at home.

In 1956, Dr. Isard established the first academic regional science department in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania.

Regional scientists find patterns in the way humans use space by studying population distribution and migration, the impact of changes in transportation, and problems of land use and economic growth.

Dr. Isard defended his specialty as a separate discipline in a 1961 interview in Philadelphia Magazine. "The region," he said, "has its own essence which can be grasped in full only by tools, hypotheses, models, and data-processing techniques, specifically designed for regional analysis."

Early in his career, while at Harvard University in 1949, Dr. Isard did a regional-science study of the iron and steel industry. At the time, New Englanders were hoping those industries would replace their diminishing textile plants.

Dr. Isard concluded, however, that a large expansion of the steel industry would happen not in New England but in Bucks County. In 1952, U.S. Steel opened its Fairless Hills plant, which eventually employed 7,000. Dr. Isard predicted that the plant would have a multiplier effect of five, estimating that every job would create five additional jobs because the plant would stimulate retail trade and attract steel fabricators and other related businesses.

Dr. Isard wrote 300 published papers and 25 books. Besides his research in regional science, he pursued interests related to conflict management and resolution and to disarmament and peace science. He was a founder of the Regional Science Association, the Journal of Regional Science, the Peace Science Society, and the Graduate Group in Peace Science at Penn.

A committed pacifist, Dr. Isard left Penn in 1979 to move to Cornell University, where he concentrated on promoting peace science as a discipline. As a professor emeritus of economics, he continued to teach a seminar at Cornell until suffering a heart attack in June, his son Peter said.

The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Dr. Isard graduated from Simon Gratz High School and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Temple University. While earning a doctorate in economics from Harvard, he studied on a fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he met his future wife, Caroline Berliner.

Dr. Isard, whose doctoral dissertation was titled "The Economic Dynamics of Transport Technology," was one of the first economists to predict the postwar dominance of airline transportation, his son said.

By World War II, Dr. Isard had become a Quaker and, as a conscientious objector, performed alternative service as an attendant in a mental hospital.

After the war, he lectured at several universities, studied at Harvard on a postdoctoral fellowship, and then was associate professor of regional economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1953 to 1956, when he joined the faculty at Penn.

Dr. Isard played several instruments and was a wonderful pianist, his son said. He was once invited to play at an impromptu session with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He and his wife were active ballroom dancers until he was 90. He particularly loved the waltz and taught it to all his grandchildren, his son said. He also mesmerized his children and later grandchildren with fantastic stories and games and led them on expeditions for buried treasure - typically a few pennies buried in advance, his son said.

In addition to his wife of 68 years and son Peter, Dr. Isard is survived by sons Michael, Arthur, and Scott; daughters Toni Yagoda and Anni; a sister; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Daughter Roberta died in 1976, and daughter Susan died in 2003.

The family was planning a private service.

Memorial donations may be made to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia 19102-1403.