Upon completing his Ph.D., Berry was appointed to the faculty at the University of Chicago, rising to the position of Irving B.Harris Professor of Urban Geography, geography department chair and director of the Center for Urban Studies, positions that he held until 1976. During this time his urban and regional research sparked geography’s social-scientific revolution and made him the most-cited geographer for more than 25 years, known for his refinement of central place theory and for laying the foundations of analytic urban geography, of spatial analysis, and of geographic information science. In 1965 he acquired dual US-UK citizenship.[3] Since 1990 his studies have focused on long-wave theory and its relationships to macrohistorical phasing of economic development and political behavior. He also has researched variations in the quality of life ("happiness") across and within nations.
From 1976 to 1981 Berry was the Frank Backus Williams Professor of City and Regional Planning in the Graduate School of Design, chair of the PhD Program in Urban Planning and professor in sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, director of the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis and a faculty fellow of the Institute for International Development at Harvard, and following that was appointed University Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy and dean of the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University for a period of 5 years. In 1986 he joined the University of Texas at Dallas, occupying the Lloyd Viel Berkner Regental Professorship, and becoming founding dean of the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He has remained active there since.
Berry has authored over 550 books and articles, and attempts to bridge theory and practice via involvement in urban and regional development activities in both advanced and developing countries. During his career he also has been advisor to more than 150 new PhDs and has served on an equal number of other doctoral committees. Many of his students have gone on to successful academic and professional careers in their own right. He also has been an active family historian and genealogist, with many additional publications to his name, most recently delving into genetic genealogy, where testing by FamilyTreeDNA documents his y-Dna to be the Bell-Beaker R-L21>A5846>A5840>A5835>Y18815>Y42681, which he shares with descendants of John Berry of Honley in Yorkshire (1510-1569), and his mitochondrial DNA to be T2f1a1.
References
^Phil Hubbard, et al. (1993). Key thinkers on space and place. pp. 47–51.
^Short bio Brian J Berry at University of Texas in Dallas. Accessed Nov 20, 2009.
^Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 41.
