Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(4), 2001, pp. 734–747 © 2001 by Association of American Geographers Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. IN MEMORIAM Paul Wheatley, 1921–1999 Brian J. L. Berry* and Donald C. Dahmann** *School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas **Department of Geography, George Washington University aul Wheatley passed away 30 October 1999 at his Indiana Dunes home on the Southern shore of Lake Michigan. This was, alas, a full year before the University of Chicago Press published his final work, The Places Where Men Pray To- gether: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (2001a). With his passing, geography lost one of its great minds, a multilingual poly- math whose enduring contribution will be his interpretation of premod- ern urbanism. His command of early texts enabled him to translate to con- temporary academics the systems of beliefs by which classical civilizations located themselves in the universe, or- ganized their rituals, and built monu- ments, cities, and states to maintain the rhythms and harmonies of their lives and the cosmos. For this alone, he ranks among the giants of the field. A scholar’s scholar, he thrived on the intellectual cut- and-thrust of the University of Chicago, yet was capable of running down and apprehending a mugger on the streets of Hyde Park 1 and was not above mischievous gamesmanship. In geography department meetings, he loved to use an ob- scure English word, sitting back with a grin to observe his colleagues’ reactions, and his writings are sprinkled with Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Chinese quotations with neither transliteration nor translation. One of us, a colleague, recalls his admonition that “there are other ur- ban models.” The other, a student, recalls his enthusiasm for discovery and his willingness to share that enthusiasm, motivating students, especially those who knew that learn- ing is questioning. On the Committee on Social Thought, Ralph Lerner sensed Paul’s admiration of the variety and eccentricity that marked the faculty and students of that committee, which disposed Paul to concentrate on secur- ing the conditions whereby such variety and eccentricity might flourish. In oper- ating as he did, by hints and indirection and good humor, he kept an uneasy peace among very demanding people, tiding the committee over rough times until civility could be helped to reassert itself and larger objectives might be pur- sued. But, Lerner eulogized, the place for best appreciating him was not in the chairman’s office but in his home library: The physical setting mirrored the mind of the man: a complex of subterranean rooms, connected but discrete, ordered but drawing one on to related if arcane byways, a choice and capacious assem- blage discerningly used. That study of his, a product of a lifetime of travel and reading and observation, was in truth this scholar’s finest self-portrait . . . I especially cherish the memory of Pablo’s unfeigned delight in sharing his pleasure as he pursued or illustrated a problem, moving confidently and familiarly among his books, papers, and artifacts. It was the infectious joy of a discoverer sighting land. That was the geographer I came to know. 2 Life And Career Early Years Paul Wheatley was born on 11 October 1921 in Stroud, a town in the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire, the only child of Albert Edward and Edith Elsie (Gould) Wheatley. During his life, this remarkable geographer journeyed out of England to Africa and Italy while serv- ing in the military during World War II, relocated to Sin- gapore while it was still a Crown colony, moved to Berkeley, California, returned to England, and then transplanted himself to Chicago for the final three de- P