Yuri Mansury and Budy Resosudarmo review the contributions of two Indonesian scholars, Hendra Esmara and Iwan J. Azis, whose work advanced regional science in Indonesia. Together, Esmara and Azis laid the foundation for what eventually led to the creation of the Indonesian Regional Science Association. Esmara pioneered the measurement of gross regional domestic products (GRDP), making it possible to both track the development of Indonesia’s peripheral regions over time and then contrast them with Java’s growth centers. His work in the 1960s laid the foundation for subsequent studies addressing provincial income inequality in the emerging economy, and he inspired later generations of social scientists to investigate disparities in the Indonesian regional per capita GDP. Esmara also established the Institute for Regional Economic Research at Universitas Andalas in the provincial capital of West Sumatra, far away from the Island of Java and the nation’s main population centers. A generation later, Iwan Azis championed the use of mathematical models and formal economic theories for regional analysis. He introduced younger scholars to quantitative methods, including the social accounting matrix (SAM), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling approaches, which were at the forefront of regional science research in the 1980s. Azis raised the future of Indonesian academia by teaching his students the concept of “publish-or-perish,” redirecting their career ambitions away from government policy work toward becoming professional researchers who actively produced published work.