The geographer Professor Thomas Walter Freeman was born on 27 December 1908 in Congleton, Cheshire. Between 1922 and 1926 Freeman attended grammar schools in Nantwich, Cheshire and at Bridgend, South Wales. In 1927 he entered the University of Leeds and in 1930 graduated with a first-class honours degree in geography, followed in 1931 by a Diploma of Education.

He served as a Lecturer in the Geography Department of Edinburgh University, 1933-1936, and in 1934 he assumed some editorial responsibilities for the Scottish Geographical Magazine. Freeman then moved to Trinity College, Dublin, where he initiated an honours course in geography and began research on Irish population patterns.

During the Second World War, between 1941 and 1945 he worked part-time at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge as assistant to P. M. Roxby, who was preparing Admiralty handbooks on China.

In 1950 Freeman became Reader in Geography at Manchester University - and then Professor in 1974 - and he remained at Manchester until his retirement in 1976.

His publications included Ireland: a Regional Geography (1950), Geography and Planning (1958), The Conurbations of Great Britain (1959), and Geography and Regional Administration (1968).

Professor Thomas Walter Freeman died on 11 March 1988