Brian J. L. Berry is Lloyd Viel Berkner Regental Professor and professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas.

He received his B.Sc. (Economics) degree at University College, London in 1955, the M.A. in geography from the University of Washington in 1956 and the Ph.D. in 1958. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago (1958-1976), at Harvard (1976-1981), and a dean at Carnegie-Mellon (1981-1986), joining UTD in 1986. In the 1960s his urban and regional research sparked geography's "quantitative revolution" and made him the most-cited geographer for more than 25 years. Subsequently, his inquiries have extended from urban ecology to geographic information systems, from growth center theory to the concept of counterurbanization, and, most recently, have focused on long-wave macroeconomic/historical processes. The author of more than 500 books and articles, he has attempted to bridge theory and practice via involvement in urban and regional development activities in both advanced and developing countries. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, is a fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1988. In 1999 he became the first geographer and one of the few social scientists ever to serve as a member of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences.