Laurence Dudley Stamp

Born Mar. 9, 1898, in Bexley, near London; died Aug. 8, 1966, in Mexico City. British geographer and geologist.

After graduating from the University of London, Stamp worked on geological surveys in India and Burma and in 1923 took a teaching position at the University of Rangoon. In 1926 he transferred to the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a lecturer until 1945 and then a professor of economic and social geography. In the 1930’s he directed a study of the land resources of Great Britain, the results of which he summarized in The Land of Britain: Its Use and Misuse (2nd ed., 1950); he became a founder of the economic geographical school of land-use study.

Stamp was president of the Royal Geographical Society, the Geographical Association, and the Institute of British Geographers. In 1949 he directed a world land-use survey of the International Geographical Union; he served as president of the union in the years 1952–56. Stamp edited and wrote many textbooks on regional geography and world economy, including books in the University Geographical Series. He was coauthor of The British Isles: A Geographic and Economic Survey (with S. Beaver, 1933; Russian translation, 1948) and editor of the Glossary of Geographical Terms (vols. 1–2,1961; Russian translation, 1975–76).