Julian Wolpert

Wolpert was an early behaviorist (1960s) who demonstrated that producer and migrant decisions were affected differentially by imperfect information and environmental uncertainty. The analyses used operations research and multivariate statistical models of spatially sampled data. Later research focused on the migration decision, the relation between commuting and migration, siting and closing of amenity and "nimby" facilities, disaster evacuation, and the effects of sprawl on regional development. More recently, his studies concerned the nonprofit marketplace in cities, nonprofit service representation and saturation of neighborhoods, locational differences in generosity, distributional effects of foundations, the fiscal viability of nonprofits, and methods for planning and evaluating nonprofit organizations and foundations.

Wolpert is a 1953 graduate of Columbia University (BA) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, MS & PhD (geography). He served as a US Navy officer from 1956 to 1959. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and AAAS. He has been a fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the Woodrow Wilson Center and has been a Guggenheim fellow. Wolpert is a nationally cited scholar in the fields of location theory, urban development, migration, public and social services, and the analysis of charity, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector, and has testified before Congress about the regulation of philanthropy. He has challenged conservatives who advocate for charitable rather than public service approaches to social policy. Wolpert served as vice president, then president of the Association of American Geographers and vice president of the Regional Science Association and the American Geographical Society and was elected to the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Julian Wolpert (born 1932) is Bryant Professor Emeritus of Geography, Public Affairs, and Urban Planning at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where he taught from 1973 to 2005 and chaired the Program in Urban and Regional Planning. He was previously a member of the Regional Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania (1963–73).