British Economist Thomas Robert Malthus, economist, philosopher, and clergyman, practically invented the modern study of population, on which all of evolutionary biology depends. Charles Darwin read Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population which was published in 1798. Malthus's interest was only in humans, but it was from Malthus's essay that Darwin got an insight that was essential to natural selection.

Born February 13, 1766, Thomas Malthus studied at Cambridge. He was ordained an Anglican minister, and was also Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India College in Hertfordshire. Malthus's main argument was that human populations grow in an exponential fashion (for example by doubling), while resources increase in a linear fashion (at a constant rate) if at all. Therefore, Malthus concluded, human populations will always exceed resources such as food and shelter. This was not good news to social reformers. Malthus's doctrine indicated that all the efforts of social reformers to relieve the misery of the poor are doomed to failure, unless population growth is limited. Malthus was notorious for his opposition to the Poor Laws, which provided assistance to poor families, and his support of the Corn Laws, which caused food to be more expensive. He reasoned that welfare to the poor was only a temporary solution to the problem of privation. Malthus's doctrine also directly contradicted the religious concept of divine providence, which maintains that God created a world that could sustain humans. Instead, Malthus claimed (in the first edition of his Essay, an argument dropped from later editions) that suffering and privation were part of a divine plan to continually improve the world. In a world with unlimited resources, everyone would succeed. But in a Malthusian world of population growth amid limited resources, those individuals that had the opportunities, abilities, and motivation would be the ones to succeed, while the others would perish.

Darwin realized that Malthus's doctrine also applied to animals and plants. In a crowded world, only those individuals with superior abilities would survive and reproduce. Because traits are inherited, the next generation would resemble those superior individuals. This is natural selection. But the world remains crowded, and only the superior among the superior individuals would survive and reproduce. Therefore, natural selection does not produce adaptations that are simply good enough, but selects for continual improvement. With this line of reasoning, Darwin realized that natural selection could cause even the simplest organisms of the past to eventually develop into the complex organisms on the Earth today.

Malthus's argument has proven true in nonhuman species but incorrect in human populations. Recent experience has shown that providing assistance to nations with high levels of poverty is associated with a decrease, not an increase, in population growth rate; and that economic success is not associated with genetic differences.

Thomas Malthus died December 23, 1834.

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