William Henry Dean Jr. (1910–1952) was an American economic geographer. He was the second

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

to gain a PhD in economics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. His 1938 doctoral dissertation applied results from mathematics and astronomy to

location theory Location theory has become an integral part of economic geography, regional science, and spatial economics. Location theory addresses questions of what economic activities are located where and why. Location theory or microeconomic theory generall ...

economic geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography that studies economic activity and factors affecting it. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topi ...

Works

* ''The theory of the geographic location of economic activities, with special reference to historical change''. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1938.

References

1910 births 1952 deaths 20th-century American geographers Economic geographers African-American economists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 20th-century American economists 20th-century African-American scientists {{geographer-stub