Retired UC Berkeley professor dies at 70

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jan 11, 2007 | by Kristin Bender

BERKELEY -- Allan Richard Pred, a retired UC Berkeley professor of cultural geography who is touted as one of the world's leading geographers and social scientists, died Friday at Alta Bates Medical Center after a short battle with acute lung cancer, university officials said.

He was 70.

Mr. Pred -- who rode his bicycle to UC Berkeley nearly every day of the 45 years he taught there -- retired in May. He was diagnosed with cancer a few months later, his daughter Michele Pred of Berkeley said.

A colleague of Mr. Pred's said he left an "indelible stamp" on the geography department because of his devotion to critical thought and his passion for truth and human freedom.

"Allan Pred was a formidable intellectual, a brilliant thinker, a great humanist, a loyal and trusted friend, and a generous and engaged mentor," said colleague Michael Watts, professor of geography and director of UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies.

Those who knew Mr. Pred said he chose cultural geography as his life's work because it incorporates so many different fields. "His work was really about how the urban environment effects people," said Michele Pred, an artist whose work focuses on political and social ideas and who is dedicating her new exhibit called "Predilections" to her father.

"He was very much for people and always thought there was so much unfairness in the world and that's what he wrote a lot about. In his writing he was fighting for those people," his daughter said.

At the time of his death, he was completing a book manuscript about the life of American-French dancer Josephine Baker as a way to show how racism took form during the early 20th century.

Born in the Bronx, New York City in 1936, Mr. Pred was the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Poland. When he was 16, Mr. Pred enrolled at the Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

In 1957, he graduated first in his class and enrolled in Pennsylvania State University to study geography. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1962.

Mr. Pred joined the faculty at UC Berkeley at the age of 25. Within five years, he had obtained tenure. By 1971, at 34, was appointed full professor.

A dedicated teacher and mentor, Mr. Pred's graduate seminars drew historians, planners, and students of rhetoric and literature, university officials said.

He met his wife of 44 years, Hjordis, who is Swedish, in San Francisco in 1962. The couple married three months later and lived in Berkeley and spent summers at their country home in Sormland, Sweden -- a place they called their creative and romantic retreat, his daughter said.

Mr. Pred is survived by his wife, Hjordis Pred of Berkeley; his daughter, Michele Pred of Berkeley; his son, Joseph Pred of San Francisco; his brother, Ralph Pred of British Columbia; his sister, Suzanne Pred Bass of New York City; his two nieces, Emily and Rebecca Bass; and his nephew, Noah Pred.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Jan. 28, in the Great Hall of the Men's Faculty Club on the UC Berkeley campus. Donations in Mr. Pred's name can be sent to the American Lung Association, 61 Broadway NY, NY 1006.