Professor Michael Wise: Geographer whose skills made him a leading force in his discipline for more than 30 years

Michael Wise

Michael Wise, who has died at 97, was a leading force in British geography throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s. He joined the London School of Economics' Department of Geography in 1951 and served it with distinction and total loyalty way beyond his official retirement in 1983; he was the single pro-Director for the next two years, filling the gap between Ralf Dahrendorf's retirement as Director and IG Patel's appointment as his successor.

A consummate administrator and academic politician, he first came to prominence as Chairman of the Programme Committee for the 20th International Geographical Congress, held in London in 1964 – a great success which he counted as one of his major contributions to the discipline. Four years later he was elected a Vice-President of the International Geographical Union for an eight-year period, and in 1976 became only the second British geographer, after his mentor Sir Dudley Stamp, to be elected the Union's President.

His contributions to British geography were many and varied, increasingly in a leadership role. He was one of only a few geographers elected to the presidency of all three of the discipline's learned societies: the Institute of British Geographers (1974); the Geographical Association (1976-1977); and the Royal Geographical Society (1980-1982). He also chaired the Geography and Planning Committee of the Social Science Research Council, later becoming Vice-Chairman of the Council itself.

He was born in Stafford in 1918; his father moved the family to Birmingham's eastern suburbs on becoming a headmaster, and Michael attended Saltley Secondary School before enrolling at the University of Birmingham to read geography. At a marvellous 90th birthday party held at the LSE, with as many as 250 present, he read from a primary school essay: “My favourite lesson is geography. I will tell you why. It is because it teaches me all about the world and all the things upon it.”

Graduating with the Mercator Prize in 1939 (his undergraduate dissertation was on the spatial organisation of the city's milk rounds) he studied for a DipEd (he was a consummate teacher, very skilled at blackboard mapping) and then enrolled for a research degree. War service with the Royal Artillery and then the Northamptonshire Regiment in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Italy and Austria intervened: he reached the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the Battle of the Argenta Gap. In 1942 he married Barbara Hodgetts. They met when she was doing her lifesaver training and asked him if she could practise on him. Barbara died in 2007 after several years of illness, devotedly cared for by Michael.

He returned to Birmingham University in 1946 as an assistant lecturer in geography and registered for a PhD, which he was awarded in 1951. Before to the war he had worked on an industrial survey of Birmingham, which provided the foundation for his thesis. One paper emerging from it, on the city's jewellery and gun quarters, is a still-cited classic in industrial geography. His research was instrumental to the work of the West Midland Group on Post-war Reconstruction and Planning, which brought him into contact with members of the Cadbury family – a long-lasting relationship that stimulated some of his later research.

In 1951 he moved to the LSE as lecturer. He was made Sir Ernest Cassel Reader in Economic Geography in 1954 and appointed to the chair vacated by Sir Dudley Stamp in 1958. By then he had become deeply involved in committee work within the School, and he became department head in 1961 – serving until 1965 and then for three terms as convener, building up a strong department at the forefront of trends in geographical scholarship, a doughty supporter of the now-defunct Joint School of Geography with King's College, and inaugurating some of the discipline's first taught masters' programmes.

Wise's skills, expertise and experience were soon being called upon more widely. He served as a governor of Birkbeck College for 21 years, the last six as chairman, and for seven years travelled regularly to Hong Kong as a member of the colony's University Grants Committee. He chaired a Departmental Committee on Smallholdings for four years and served for 19 years on the Department of Transport's Advisory Committee on Landscape Treatment of Trunk Roads (which he chaired for nine years). For these and many other services he was awarded the CBE in 1979.

All of this work limited Wise's output as a researcher and publisher, but he remained abreast of the rapid changes in his discipline and made regular contributions on issues linking geographical scholarship to planning – on the impact of the proposed Channel Tunnel, for example. And he developed an interest in the discipline's history, especially its teaching in schools and universities. Long after his retirement he could be seen ferreting in the RGS archives to inform his essays on these subjects, all information stored in a prodigious memory that remained with him until the last few years, and in a mass of well-organised papers in his home office, landing, attic and garage.

Somebody once remarked that Wise could easily have been either a diplomat or a bishop. His administrative activities and achievements exemplify the qualities for the former post, his pastoral work the second. Nothing pleased him more than a visit from a student seeking help, or an academic colleague wanting advice. All were given as much time as was needed and many owe much in their future careers to his care, advice and assistance. His quiet impact, never broadcast nor boasted of, is widespread.

He was a devoted family man, and to his grandchildren he was an avuncular figure (also characterised by his annual appearances as Father Christmas at LSE's Christmas parties) who kept them amused and interested. They were amazed to learn at his 90th birthday celebrations how much this self-effacing, self-contained man had achieved and given over a long, selfless career.

Michael John Wise, geographer: born Stafford 17 August 1918; CBE 1979; married 1942 Barbara Hodgetts (died 2007; one daughter, one son); died 13 October 2015.