Geography professor, Edward Louis Ullman (1912-1976), was one of the nation's respected economic geographers. His specialties were urban problems, regional planning and various aspects of transportaion. He was a University of Washington professor of geography beginning in 1951, associate dean of the University of Washington Graduate School in 1962-1965, and acting director of the Center for Urban and Regional research in 1968-1969. Ullman's quarter-century at the University of Washington was punctuated by several periods of service in government and education elsewhere. In 1974, President Nixon appointed him to Amtrak's board of directors, 1974-1976. That appointment capped a series of government-related assignments that he interspersed with his academic career which included a professorship of regional planning at Harvard University, 1946-1951; visiting professorships at Haifa, Hebrew, Washington (at St. Louis, Missouri) and McGill Universities and the Universities of Moscow and Rome as well as teaching postions at the University College in London, the University of Vienna, and Washington State and Indiana Universities. He also served as president of the Washington Center for Metropolitan Studies, Washington, D.C., 1965-1967; director, Merimec Basin Research Project, St. Louis, 1959-1961; and president, Western Regional Science Association, 1969-1971.
Arranged in 4 accessions:
Correspondence, speeches and writings, notes, minutes, reports, conference and convention files, curriculum files, subject files, project files; 1930-1988.
Access restricted. For terms of access, contact Special Collections.
Creator's literary rights not transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.
Ullman corresponded on a first-name basis with virtually every major geographer of his time. Because of his personal associations with geographers working in academic and public-service capacities, the General Correspondence series has been organized to provide the greatest degree of individual name control rather than corporate name control. However, cross-references have been liberally provided in cases where Ullman carried on a personal correspondence with an individual who also served (and occasionally wrote to Ullman) in corporate capacities.
Ullman's writings have been divided into two subseries -- Major Published Works (books, articles, reports) and Unpublished Works (manuscripts, press statements, speeches, reviews). For most of the published works the series Speeches and Writings contains preliminary typescripts, notes and references, final published versions and some reprinted versions. An extensively revised and corrected bibliography, compiled particularly to reflect the writings included in the accession, is in Folder 1/8.
Ullman's professional contacts with other geographers are reflected in part in the series Speeches and Writings by Other Authors, which includes books, monographs, articles and reprints inscribed to and/or annotated by Ullman. Noteworthy is Ullman's personal, extensively annotated copy of Hartshorne's
Subject Files include research materials pertaining to cities and outposts (Folders 74/1-2)), a project on which Ullman was working at the time of his death. The Subject Files also include a collection of railroad memorabilia (Box 78), which incorporates timetables and route maps. A comparison of these memorabilia with the most important of the accession's series (Amtrak Board of Directors, Boxes 86-102), documenting Ullman's work in corporate capacities, is instructive, as it provides an historical overview of rail passenger transportation then and now.
Complete biographical information concerning Ullman may be found in Folders 1/1-16 and 72/1. Of particular interest is a 1971 letter from Ullman to Robert B. McNee, Folder 1/12, in which Ullman provided a particularly telling autobiographical sketch.
See also: Folders 13/11, 13/35, 17/16