Paul Ralph Ehrlich (May 29, 1932 – March 13, 2026) was an American biologist, author, and environmentalist known for his predictions and warnings about the consequences of population growth, including famine and resource depletion. Ehrlich was the Bing Professor of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University. He started working at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in 1959. He along with many other biology professors, led the efforts for Stanford University to designate and protect Jasper Ridge in 1973 as a biological preserve and as a long-term research facility for faculty and students. Ehrlich became well known for the controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which he co-authored with his wife Anne H. Ehrlich, in which they famously stated that "[i]n the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." This position has led historians and critics to describe Ehrlich as a neo-Malthusian. There are mixed views on Ehrlich's assertions on the dangers of expanding human populations. While statistician Paul A. Murtaugh says that Ehrlich was largely correct, Ehrlich has been criticized for his approach and views, both for their pessimistic outlook and for the failure of his predictions. In 2004, Ehrlich had acknowledged that population growth was in decline, but had believed that overconsumption by wealthy nations was a major problem. He maintained that his warnings about disease and climate change were essentially correct. Journalist Dan Gardner criticized Ehrlich for his cognitive dissonance in forecasting, asserting that Ehrlich took credit for his successful predictions but failed to acknowledge his mistakes.
Early life, education and academic career
Ehrlich was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of William Ehrlich and Ruth Rosenberg. His father was a shirt salesman and his mother was a Greek and Latin scholar and public school teacher. Ehrlich's mother's German ancestors arrived in the United States in the 1840s, and his paternal grandparents emigrated there later from the Galician and Transylvanian part of the Austrian Empire. Ehrlich has been described as having grown up in a household that was Jewish but anti-Zionist. During his childhood his family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey, where he attended Columbia High School, graduating in 1949. By training, Ehrlich was an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies). He earned a bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953, an M.A. from the University of Kansas in 1955, and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1957, supervised by the prominent bee researcher Charles Duncan Michener (the title of his dissertation: The Morphology, Phylogeny and Higher Classification of the Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea)). During his studies he participated in surveys of insects in the areas of the Bering Sea and Canadian arctic, and then, with a National Institutes of Health fellowship, investigated the genetics and behavior of parasitic mites. In 1959 he joined the faculty at Stanford University. He became well known for popularizing the term coevolution in an influential 1964 paper co-authored with the botanist Peter H. Raven, where they proposed that reciprocal selective responses between insects and their food plants explains the extreme diversification of plants and insects. This paper was highly influential on the then-nascent field of chemical ecology. He was promoted to professor of biology in 1966, and appointed to the Bing Professorship in 1977. In 1984, he founded the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Overpopulation debate
A lecture that Ehrlich gave on the topic of overpopulation at the Commonwealth Club of California was broadcast by radio in April 1967. The success of the lecture caused further publicity, and the suggestion from David Brower the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, and Ian Ballantine of Ballantine Books to write a book concerning the topic. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne H. Ehrlich, collaborated on the book, The Population Bomb, but the publisher insisted that a single author be credited; only Paul's name appears as an author. Although Ehrlich was not the first to warn about population issues — concern had been widespread during the 1950s and 1960s — his charismatic and media-savvy methods helped publicize the topic. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson had Ehrlich on as a guest more than twenty times, with one interview lasting an hour.
Writings
The Population Bomb (1968)
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