Professor T J Chandler

Professor Tony John Chandler died at his home near Eastbourne, on 17 July 2008, aged 79. He is remembered for pioneering work in urban climatology, air pollution and regional climatology. Born in Leicester on 7 November 1928, his secondary education was at Hinckley Grammar School and then Alderman Newton Boys’ School in Leicester. In 1946, he entered King's College London (KCL) and graduated with a first class BSc in Geography with Mathematics. In 1949 he took a Teacher's Diploma and spent his national service (1950–52) teaching meteorology at RAF Cranwell. In 1952 he was appointed as an assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London where he also worked on an MSc degree, part of which was a thesis on the historical geography of Leicestershire. After three years he was promoted to lecturer and started his research on the climate of greater London. In 1956, Professor H C Darby, the distinguished historical geographer and head of geography at neighbouring University College London (UCL), needed a lecturer in meteorology and climatology and, after amicable discussion with Chandler's head of department, Professor W G East, offered the post to him. The fact that he had a master's degree in historical geography was undoubtedly an additional point of attraction for Darby. Tony Chandler joined UCL as a lecturer (1956), became reader (1965) and finally professor (1969); he moved to a chair at the University of Manchester in 1973. At UCL, Chandler delivered courses on introductory and advanced meteorology and climatology, and on cartography to undergraduates. He also taught on environmental themes for master's degrees in architecture, botany and geology (hydrology). As a teacher, he was clear and rigorous. Undergraduates who had taken mathematics and the sciences at A-level were at ease with this approach, but many who came to geography via the humanities found his lectures challenging. Tony Chandler's doctoral research grew out of the London Climatological Survey. The first element of this involved a mobile recording station, housed first in a second-hand car, later in a new Land Rover, that Chandler drove along traverses through London monitoring temperature and humidity at various hours of the day and night. The second element involved more than 60 schools, teacher training colleges and private individuals maintaining climatological recording stations. The Survey soon attracted the attention of academics and town planners around the world. London's ‘heat island’ and pattern of air pollution, which Chandler delineated, were discussed widely in the media. In 1964 he submitted his doctoral thesis, ‘Studies of the climate of London’, from which The Climate of London (1965) soon emerged. As was the custom for a member of academic staff, his supervisor had been the head of department H C Darby. In practice, he worked largely alone but he did discuss his work with Professor Gordon Manley at Bedford College, University of London. The London Climatological Survey was extended with funding from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, allowing automatic temperature recorders to be installed on the top of the Post Office Communications Tower, close to UCL. Another project involved making air temperature and humidity traverses across Leicester and Brighton. Indeed, the Chandler household moved from suburban London to Brighton in 1967 to facilitate one of those enquiries that made use of the well-equipped Land Rover. As Tony Chandler's scientific reputation grew he was invited to a growing number of international meetings. He was especially proud to have convened the joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO)/World Health Organization (WHO) Symposium on Urban Climates and Building Climatology held in Brussels in 1968. He was on the editorial board of Weather (1958–61), a member of the Council of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) (1961–64) and Secretary of the RMS in the early 1970s. He was also on the editorial board of Boundary-Layer Meteorology. He received the prestigious Back Award from the Royal Geographical Society in 1963 and served on the organising group for the International Geographical Congress that met in London in the following year. He was rapporteur on urban climates to the WMO (1965–69) and a consultant to the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston. In 1970, he chaired the British National Committee for Geography working group that prepared evidence for submission to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. As well as these scientific and administrative commitments, Tony Chandler supervised doctoral students researching urban thunderstorms, air pollution, evapotranspiration, the long distance transport of atmospheric smoke and sulphur dioxide, and the relative influences of surface roughness and temperature on urban airflow. He later wrote that the years at the University of London were productive and happy. However, like many of his contemporaries, Chandler wanted to run a university department and manage a research unit of his own. An opportunity arrived in 1973 in the form of a Chair of Geography at the University of Manchester, and he became head of department in 1974. He had the pleasure of seeing the department move into a new building that doubled its accommodation. He was also chairman of the Pollution Research Unit in the University of Manchester and worked with a larger scientific team than at UCL. In the midst of all this activity, he co-edited The Climate of the British Isles (with S Gregory, 1976) and wrote various short works, reports and articles. His external commitments grew rapidly and his family recall that he was a frequent train traveller between Manchester and Euston Station. He was vice president of the RMS (1973–75), a member of the WMO Committee on Climate and Environmental Problems (1972–74), the Royal Commission on Climate and Environmental Pollution (1973–77), the UK Government's Clean Air Council, and the Council of the Natural Environment Research Council (1974–79), and scientific secretary of the Royal Society Study Group on Pollution and the Atmosphere (1975–77). Early in 1977, Birkbeck College invited Tony Chandler to become Master. This was an irresistible opportunity. However, it soon became clear that coping with challenging personnel issues required greater compromise than he could accept. After only 16 months in the post, he resigned as Master on medical grounds in January 1979. His Birkbeck colleague, Professor Eila Campbell, described his departure as ‘devastating news’. At only 50, he entered three decades of retirement, depriving British geography of one of its most respected scholars. In the late 1980s he became an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL and a Visiting Professor at KCL, returning to give some lectures in both institutions. Unfortunately, Tony Chandler suffered ongoing problems of ill health and his teaching had to cease. His wife, Margaret, predeceased him. His daughter Kathryn and son Adrian survive him

Cartography · Geographer · Geography · Grammar school · Pedagogy · Sociology · Climate variability and models · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · History