Stan Openshaw

Stan Openshaw (born 10 August 1946) is a retired British geographer. His last post was professor of human geography based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. After eighteen years at Newcastle University, including three years as professor of quantitative geography, he moved to work in Leeds in 1992. Stan was a researcher in computer-based geography and his work aimed to automate aspects of geographical research and reduce subjectivity in geographical analyses. He worked on geographical information systems, analysis technology and models. He debated the direction geography should take putting forward a view that the subject needed an applied and scientific edge that harnessed the growing power of computers to make positive impacts to help us avoid and mitigate risk and cope better with disasters.

In 1992 he set up the Centre for Computational Geography (CCG) as an inter-disciplinary unit at the University of Leeds, an organisation dedicated to bringing computers to bear on complex social and physical problems. Stan directed the CCG for seven years until suffering a severely disabling stroke in 1999 after which he was retired.

Stan became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Chartered Statistician in 1993, a Fellow of the Institute of Statisticians in 1983 and was a Member of the British Computer Society from 1983.

In 2012 at the GISRUK conference in Lancaster a special session was arranged to celebrate his work and geographical career.

Since his major disabling stroke in 1999 Stan has struggled to communicate verbally and get around.

Stan's "Southern – East Lothian" B.A. Honours Geography Thesis has six chapters describing the physical and socio-economic geography of the region in the south east of Scotland. It contains tables of data, maps, aerial and ground level photographs, diagrams, statistical analysis, considerable description and details of two surveys (one about tourism which Stan aimed at tourists in Dunbar, and another about agriculture which Stan aimed at farmers). It may be that there is more than one copy of this thesis produced in 1968 and submitted to Newcastle University, but it would not be surprising for Stan to have kept a copy. A copy is stored with other artefacts of Stan's in a collection called "The Stan Openshaw Collection" the physical manifestation of which resides for the time being at the University of Leeds.

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