Paul R. Ehrlich
| Paul R. Ehrlich | |
|---|---|
Ehrlich in 1974
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| Born | Paul Ralph Ehrlich May 29, 1932 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States |
| Residence | Stanford, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Alma mater |
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| Thesis | The Morphology, Phylogeny and Higher Classification of the Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) (1957) |
| Doctoral advisor | C. D. Michener |
| Known for | The Population Bomb |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | Anne H. Ehrlich (married 1954) |
| Children | Lisa Marie |
Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932) is an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. He is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the Department of Biology at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued. Among the measures he suggested in that book was population control, to be used in his opinion if voluntary methods were to fail. Ehrlich has been criticized for his views; for example, Ronald Bailey called Ehrlich an irrepressible doomster. On the other hand, Carl Haub observed that Ehrlich's warnings had encouraged countries to take action to avert disaster. Ehrlich has acknowledged that some of what he had written had not come about, but holds to his view that overpopulation remains a major problem.
Ehrlich was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruth (Rosenberg) and William Ehrlich. His father was a shirt salesman, his mother a Greek and Latin scholar.
Ehrlich earned a bachelor's degree in zoology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953, an M.A. at the University of Kansas in 1955, and a Ph.D. in 1957 at the University of Kansas, supervised by the prominent bee researcher C.D. Michener. During his studies he participated in surveys of insects on the Bering Sea and in the 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, being promoted to professor of biology in 1966. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies); he published a landmark paper about the evolution of plants and insects. He was appointed to the Bing Professorship in 1977.
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