Meier, Richard L. 1920-2007 (Richard Louis Meier)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 16, 1920, in Kendallville, IN; died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure, February 26, 2007, in Berkeley, CA. Educator, urban planner, chemist, and author. Meier was a pioneer in the field of urban planning, predicting the importance of sustainable development and renewable energy sources before many of his colleagues did. A chemist by training, he earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois in 1940 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles over the next four years. He worked as a research chemist for several years and was executive secretary of the Federation of American Scientists in the late 1940s. Meier joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1950. After a term as a visiting professor at Harvard from 1959 to 1960, he taught at the University of Michigan. During the early 1960s, he was an associate professor at the School of Natural Resources there, then professor of resources planning from 1965 to 1967. Meier spent the next thirty-five years at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught students in the departments of architecture and urban and regional planning. As a researcher and author, Meier was concerned about population growth and the dwindling of natural resources. He was one of the early proponents of solar power and other alternative energies and also sought ways to improve the lives of the poor through better urban planning. Among his many books are Science and Economic Development (1956; 2nd edition, 1966), Planning for an Urban World (1974), and Urban Futures Observed in the Asian Third World (1980).

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Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2007, p. B8.