A report on An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus and Charles Darwin

Title page of the original edition of 1798

Darwin, c. undefined 1854, when he was preparing On the Origin of Species for publication

Part of Thomas Malthus's table of population growth in England 1780–1810, from his An Essay on the Principle of Population, 6th edition, 1826

Essay on the principle of population, 1826

A chalk drawing of the seven-year-old Darwin in 1816, with a potted plant, by Ellen Sharples

The epitaph of Malthus just inside the entrance to Bath Abbey

Bicentennial portrait by Anthony Smith of Darwin as a student, in the courtyard at Christ's College, Cambridge where he had rooms.

The round-the-world voyage of the Beagle, 1831–1836

Darwin (right) on the Beagle's deck at Bahía Blanca in Argentina, with fossils; caricature by Augustus Earle, the initial ship's artist.

As HMS Beagle surveyed the coasts of South America, Darwin theorised about geology and the extinction of giant mammals. Watercolour by the ship's artist Conrad Martens, who replaced Augustus Earle, in Tierra del Fuego.

While still a young man, Darwin joined the scientific elite. Portrait by George Richmond.

In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B" notebook on Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first evolutionary tree.

Darwin chose to marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

Darwin in 1842 with his eldest son, William Erasmus Darwin

Darwin's "sandwalk" at Down House was his usual "Thinking Path".

Darwin aged 46 in 1855, by then working towards publication of his theory of natural selection. He wrote to Joseph Hooker about this portrait, "if I really have as bad an expression, as my photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising."

During the Darwin family's 1868 holiday in her Isle of Wight cottage, Julia Margaret Cameron took portraits showing the bushy beard Darwin grew between 1862 and 1866.

An 1871 caricature following publication of The Descent of Man was typical of many showing Darwin with an ape body, identifying him in popular culture as the leading author of evolutionary theory.

By 1878, an increasingly famous Darwin had suffered years of illness.

The adjoining tombs of John Herschel and Charles Darwin in the nave of Westminster Abbey, London

In 1881 Darwin was an eminent figure, still working on his contributions to evolutionary thought that had an enormous effect on many fields of science. Copy of a portrait by John Collier in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Unveiling of the Darwin Statue at the former Shrewsbury School building in 1897

In 1851 Darwin was devastated when his daughter Annie died. By then his faith in Christianity had dwindled, and he had stopped going to church.

A caricature of Darwin from a 1871 Vanity Fair

Statue of Darwin in the Natural History Museum, London

The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798, but the author was soon identified as Thomas Robert Malthus.

- An Essay on the Principle of Population

In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level.

- Thomas Robert Malthus

The book's 6th edition (1826) was independently cited as a key influence by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the theory of natural selection.

- An Essay on the Principle of Population

Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

- Thomas Robert Malthus

Continuing his research in London, Darwin's wide reading now included the sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population.

- Charles Darwin

2 related topics with Alpha

Alfred Russel Wallace

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British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator.

Arenga pinnata sketched by Wallace on a visit to Celebes and later reworked by Walter Hood Fitch

A photograph from Wallace's autobiography shows the building Wallace and his brother John designed and built for the Neath Mechanics' Institute.

A map from The Malay Archipelago shows the physical geography of the archipelago and Wallace's travels around the area. The thin black lines indicate where Wallace travelled, and the red lines indicate chains of volcanoes.

An illustration from The Malay Archipelago depicts the flying frog Wallace discovered.

A photograph of Wallace taken in Singapore in 1862

Wallace's grave in Broadstone Cemetery, Broadstone, Dorset, which was restored by the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund in 2000. It features a 7 ft tall fossil tree trunk from Portland mounted on a block of Purbeck limestone.

The Darwin–Wallace Medal was issued by the Linnean Society on the 50th anniversary of the reading of Darwin and Wallace's papers on natural selection. Wallace received the only gold example.

An illustration from the chapter on the application of natural selection to humans in Wallace's 1889 book Darwinism shows a chimpanzee.

A map of the world from The Geographical Distribution of Animals shows Wallace's six biogeographical regions.

The line separating the Indo-Malayan and the Austro-Malayan region in Wallace's On the Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago (1863)

Spirit photograph taken by Frederick Hudson of Wallace and his late mother; he may have used double exposure.

Wallace and his signature on the frontispiece of Darwinism (1889)

Anthony Smith's statue of Wallace, looking up at a bronze model of a Wallace's golden birdwing butterfly. Natural History Museum, London, unveiled 7 November 2013

Alfred Russel Wallace, attributed to John William Beaufort (1864–1943), a portrait in the Central Hall of the Natural History Museum, London.

Corvus enca celebensis, Sula Islands, registered in 1861 at a forerunner of Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Toxorhamphus novaeguineae novaeguineae, Misool, Raja Ampat Islands, 1865

Pitohui ferrugineus leucorhynchus, Waigeo, West-Papua, no year

Nectarinia jugularis clementiae, Seram Island, 1865

Mino anais anais, South West Papua, 1863

His paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858, which would later prompt Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species.

Wallace spent many hours at the library in Leicester: he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus, and one evening he met the entomologist Henry Bates.

Malthusianism

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Idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off.

The Malthusian catastrophe simplistically illustrated

Global deaths in conflicts since the year 1400

A chart of estimated annual growth rates in world population, 1800–2005. Rates before 1950 are annualized historical estimates from the US Census Bureau. Red = USCB projections to 2025.

Growth in food production has historically been greater than the population growth. Food per person increased since 1961. The graph runs up to slightly past 2010.

Wheat yields in developing countries since 1961, in kg/ha Largely due to effects of the "Green Revolution". In developing countries maize yields are also still rapidly rising.

These concepts derive from the political and economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

One proponent of Malthusianism was the novelist Harriet Martineau whose circle of acquaintances included Charles Darwin, and the ideas of Malthus were a significant influence on the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution.