Born on April 19, 1919, in
Philadelphia, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Isard graduated with honors at the age of 20 from
Temple University, in 1939. He next went to
Harvard University, studying under
Alvin Hansen and
Abbott Usher. There, he developed a research interest in
building construction,
transportation development, the
location of economic activities, and the ensuing cycles of growth and stagnation that characterized the 1920–1940 period. In 1941–42, he studied at the University of Chicago, where his interest in mathematics was rekindled. Later, he was affiliated with the
National Planning Resources Board, where he completed his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation in 1943. Subsequently, he served as a conscientious objector in the Civilian Public Service; during the night at the state mental hospital where he was assigned, he translated into English the works of the German location theorists, including Lösch, Weigmann, Engländer, and Predöhl. Now focusing primarily on location issues, Isard obtained a part-time teaching position at Harvard in 1945, and did some work on the location of the U.S. steel industry, as well as some work on the costs and benefits of atomic power. At Harvard, Isard became well acquainted with
Wassily Leontief and helped him adapt his idea of an
input-output model to a local economy. Between 1949 and 1953 Isard was employed as a research associate at Harvard, but teaching a course, designed by himself, on location theory and regional development. Through this course, and through discussions with other economists, Isard managed to attract many other scholars to these fields. Already by 1948 the
American Economic Association was organizing sessions on regional development at its annual conference. At the 1950 American Economic Association meeting, Isard met with 26 other like-minded economists and came up with a clearer idea of what the newly emerging field of regional science should look like: it would be interdisciplinary, and it required some novel concepts, data, and techniques. As part of the effort to develop regional science Isard found himself at the center of a network of scholars from economics, city planning, political science, sociology, and geography. In 1977 Isard stepped down as chair of the department of regional science at Penn in order to devote more time to peace science, and moved to
Cornell University in 1979. ==Selected books==