Stamp, L. Dudley (Laurence Dudley), 1898-1966

Sir (Laurence) Dudley Stamp, 1898-1966, was born at Catford, London, the son of a provision merchant. As a boy, Stamp developed a passion for natural history and geology stimulated by holidays in the Kentish countryside. He attended University School, Rochester, and was admitted while still only fifteen years of age to King's College, London. He obtained first class honours in the B.Sc. examination in 1917. Throughout his army service in 1917-19 geology remained a main interest, and service in France and Belgium provided opportunities for geological fieldwork. He returned to King's College, London, as demonstrator in geology. Having gained a D.Sc. in 1921, he accepted a post as an oil geologist in Burma and in 1923 became professor of geology and geography in the new university of Rangoon. Sensing that the progress of geography was handicapped by a lack of good school and university textbooks, Stamp began, while still in Burma, to fill the gap. He wrote quickly and a large number of widely used textbooks followed, among them The World (1929), first written for Indian schools but later adapted for use in Britain and elsewhere.

Returning to London in 1926 to the Sir Ernest Cassel readership in economic geography at the London School of Economics, he became professor in 1945 and moved to the chair of social geography in 1948, retiring in 1958. His early interests in geology and botany undoubtedly guided his approach to geography as the study of relationships between societies and their physical environments and the growth of his special interests in land use and landscape history. Stamp quickly began to apply his belief in the value of geographical methods of survey and analysis to a survey of the land resources of Britain. He conceived and from 1936 to 1944 directed the Land Utilization Survey of Britain, a project which fired the enthusiasm of colleagues and students. The entire country was surveyed on the scale of six inches to a mile, and one-inch scale maps and county reports were published. The project was completed in 1948 with the publication of the summary report The Land of Britain : its use and misuse. For this work he received the Founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1949.

The practical value of Stamp's survey became quickly apparent. As chief adviser on rural land utilization in the Ministry of Agriculture (1942-55) and through his connection with regional surveys, he played an influential part in framing policies for land use and town and country planning for the post-war period. He developed the idea of land classification for planning purposes.

The success of his Land Utilization Survey led Stamp to develop a scheme for a World Land Use Survey, and maps and memoirs of a number of countries were published under his direction. He wrote widely on problems of population growth, food, resources, and the environment, drawing special attention to variations in the geographical distribution of resources and of man's use of them. Effective land-use planning was essential, based on closer understanding of the great diversity of geographical conditions.

Stamp strongly supported the work of many scientific societies and internationally was the best known British geographer of his generation. He was appointed CBE in 1946 and knighted in 1965.

(Based on the article by M. J. Wise in Dictionary of National Biography 1961-1970 (1981).)

From the guide to the Stamp Papers, 1918-1966, (University of Sussex Library)