Richard Louis Meier (1920 - February 26, 2007) was a US regional planner, systems theorist, scientist, urban scholar, and futurist, as well as a Professor in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. He was an early thinker on sustainability in planning, and recognized as a leading figure in city planning and development. He is not related to the New York-based architect Richard Meier, whom he was often confused with. Biography Born in 1920 in Kendallville, Indiana, Meier grew up as the oldest of five children in a family of modest means. His father was a German-American Lutheran schoolteacher, choirmaster, and organist. His mother became seriously ill shortly after the birth of her youngest child, and a lot of responsibility of running the household fell onto young Meier. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1940, and a master's and a doctorate in organic chemistry from UCLA. Meier earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1944. During World War II, Meier worked as a Standard Oil research chemist in Richmond, California. Even before taking his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at University of California at Los Angeles in 1944, Meier made his mark as a generalist and futurist, persuading the newly established department to teach leading-edge developments in nuclear chemistry and physics. Meier began talking with Berkeley scientists about the post-war implications of atomic energy and weapons. He founded along with his colleagues, what is now called, the Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit organization focused on consolidating scientific knowledge to aid national interests. During a Fulbright Fellowship in Manchester, England, in 1949-50, Meier shifted his attention to technological solutions for the problems of the world's biggest and poorest cities. As early as 1951, he convinced a University of Chicago colleague, the New Deal “brain-truster” Rexford Tugwell, of the inevitability of Meier's forecasts. These included a long list of developments, among them the radical improvement of communications using ultra fax and television devices, more effective antibiotics, and “advances toward technological oneness in the world ... followed by tighter organization and by holistic planning devices,” Tugwell said. Between 1950 and 1956, he taught in the University of Chicago's influential Program of Education and Research in Planning. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.