Subsequently, he served as a conscientious objector in the Civilian Public Service; during the night at the state mental hospital where he was assigned, he translated into English the works of the German location theorists, including Lösch, Weigmann, Engländer, and Predöhl.
[2] At Harvard, Isard became well acquainted with Wassily Leontief and helped him adapt his idea of an input-output model to a local economy.
Between 1949 and 1953 Isard was employed as a research associate at Harvard, but teaching a course, designed by himself, on location theory and regional development.
At the 1950 American Economic Association meeting, Isard met with 26 other like-minded economists and came up with a clearer idea of what the newly emerging field of regional science should look like: it would be interdisciplinary, and it required some novel concepts, data, and techniques.
[2] In 1963 Isard assembled a group of scholars in Malmö, Sweden, for the purpose of establishing the Peace Research Society.