English Economist (1766 - 1834)
Malthus' father owned a small estate and was one of the executors of French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's estate. A graduate of Jesus College in Cambridge, Malthus was a close associate of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and took orders in the Church of England in 1797.
At the same time, from discussions he participated in with his father and friends, Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Poupulation as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculation of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers (1798). Malthus proposed that population, unchecked, increases geometrically, while subsistence only increases arithmetically. Thus population, regulated by war, famine, pestilence and by the influence of misery and vice, increases only to the limits of subsistence. Although his views were a subject of much controversy, in 1803, he published a more thorough version of his theories in An Essay on the Principle of Population or a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness with an enquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal of the Evils Which it Occasions (sheesh, imagine the node titles if this guy was on E2). This categorized the checks on population into positive and preventative classes.
Although mainly intended as an argument against utopian visions of society, Malthus's ideas proved very important to Charles Darwin, who was inspired by the conflict inherent in existence, given limited resources for subsistence. A friend of the economist, David Ricardo, Malthus also contributed to the economic theory through ideas later developed into the law of diminishing returns as applied to agriculture.
Source: The Dictionary of Global Culture - Gates & Appiah