Paul R. Ehrlich

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Paul R. Ehrlich

Paul R. Ehrlich ( Paul Ralph Ehrlich ; born May 29, 1932 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) is Professor of Biology at Stanford University . He is a renowned entomologist specializing in butterflies . He is also known as a researcher and writer on overpopulation . His h-index according to Google Scholar is 148 (as of April 2019).

education

Ehrlich received his BA in Zoology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953 , his MA in 1955, and his Ph.D. 1957 at the University of Kansas . During his studies he took part in research trips on insects in the Bering Sea and in the Canadian Arctic . While on a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health , he studied the genetics and behavior of parasitic mites . In 1959 he moved to the faculty at Stanford, where he became a full professor of biology in 1966.

family

Since December 18, 1954, Paul Ehrlich has been married to Anne H. Ehrlich , née Fitzhugh Howland, an ecologist and population biologist. Together, the couple has published several publications and received a number of awards. You have a daughter.

Academic activities

Ehrlich is President of the Center of Conservation Biology at Stanford University. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society . Ehrlich's research group at Stanford is currently working on natural populations of the scabiosa butterfly (Euphydryas aurinia). Together with Gretchen Daly he worked in the field of biogeography . He researches the influence of human activities on biodiversity . Ehrlich conducts further basic research on population biology and resources , focusing on endangered species , cultural evolution, environmental ethics, and the conservation of genetic resources.

Paul Ehrlich works with colleagues from biology, but also from the fields of economics , psychology , political science , law and social sciences . For many of his questions he chooses an interdisciplinary approach.

The Population Bomb

Ehrlich's best-known book is the 1968 published The Population Bomb ( The Population Bomb ). It was written at the suggestion of David Brower , then the executive director of the Sierra Club , as a continuation of an article in the December 1967 New Scientist . In the article and book, Ehrlich predicted that between around 1970 and 1980 there would be famine in the world as overpopulation was too much of a drain on resources, calling it a fantasy, for example, that India could ever feed itself.

Ehrlich predicted that the death rate would rise massively in the 1970s (and in some places 1980s), hundreds of millions of people would starve. This prediction turned out to be wrong: the death rate decreased from 13 (per 1,000 people) in 1965–1974 to 11 in 1980–1985 and further to 10 in 1985–1990 (this trend continued and the death rate fell to 9 in the period 2005–2010). Ehrlich had, as he later admitted, overestimated the extent of famine; in fact, between 1968 and 2010, he estimated that perhaps 300 million people died of starvation. Ehrlich attributed this to the medium-term successes of the Green Revolution , which he underestimated, but which in turn had negative effects on the environment. In a statement to journalist Dan Gardner (2010), who criticized him for failing to admit mistakes, Ehrlich wrote that without a specific timeframe, he had predicted that world hunger would not go away.

further activities

Ehrlich was one of the founders of Zero Population Growth in 1968 . The organization that campaigns for growth criticism is now called Population Connection . Its main aim is to draw attention to the problem of overpopulation and to put pressure on the legislature accordingly. Ehrlich and his wife Anne were on the advisory board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform until 2003. Together with Stephen Schneider and two other authors, he criticized Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist in Scientific American from January 2002 .

Bet with Julian L. Simon

In 1980 Ehrlich made a public bet with the economist and futurologist Julian L. Simon . Simon asked Ehrlich to give him 5 amounts of metal valued at $ 1000, which, as Ehrlich and others assumed, would become scarcer in the foreseeable future and would therefore have to expect significant price increases.

Ehrlich chose chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten in a 10 year timeframe. By September 1990, however, the total price of all of these metals had fallen and Ehrlich paid Simon the difference of $ 576.07. Ehrlich would also have lost if he had invested in gasoline, food, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool or phosphates, because all these goods had become cheaper when adjusted for inflation.

A retrospective investigation based on the real price development of the raw materials showed that Simon had only won through luck. Looking at all possible periods from 1900 to 2008, Simon would only have won the bet in 38.4% of all cases, while Ehrlich would not only have won more often, but also with a large profit margin. In fact, the period 1980–1990 in which the bet was run was one of the 15 worst during the entire study period 1900–2008. Contrary to popular public opinion, the conclusion of the bet is not that there is no shortage of raw materials, but that it is better to have luck on your side than expertise when betting.

Honors, prizes and memberships (selection)

Publications

Non-fiction books in German
  • 1971: The population bomb. (en: 1968) Hanser, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-446-11406-8 . Fischer, Frankfurt 1973, ISBN 3-436-01600-4 .
  • 1972: population growth and environmental crisis. Human ecology. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1972, ISBN 3-10-816701-4 .
  • 1975: Human Ecology. The human being at the center of a new science. Springer, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-540-07250-0 .
  • 1983: The silent death. The extinction of plants and animals. Krüger, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-8105-0507-2 .
  • 1985: The Nuclear Night. The long-term climatic and biological effects of nuclear war. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1985, ISBN 3-462-01674-1 .
English
  • 1961: How to know the butterflies. Brown Company, Dubuque 1961.
  • 1963: (with Richard W. Holm) Process of Evolution. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York 1963.
  • 1968: The Population Bomb. Ballantine, New York 1968; revised edition 1971.
  • 1968: (with Richard W. Holm & Kenneth B. Armitage) Principles of Modern Biology. Nine volumes. Behavioral Research Laboratories, Palo Alto 1968
  • 1969: (with Richard W. Holm & Peter H. Raven, eds.) Papers on Evolution. Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1969
  • 1970: (with Anne H. Ehrlich) Population, Resources, Environments. Issues in Human Ecology. WH Freeman & Co., San Francisco 1970; revised edition 1972.
  • 1971: (with Richard L. Harriman) How to Be a Survivor. A Plan to Save Spaceship Earth. Ballantine Books, New York 1971.
  • with John P. Holdren (Ed.): Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovitch, New York 1971.
  • with John P. Holdren & Richard W. Holm (Eds.): Man and the Ecosphere. WH Freeman and Co., San Francisco 1971
  • with John P. Holdren & Anne H. Ehrlich: Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions. WH Freeman and Company, San Francisco 1973
  • with Richard W. Holm & Michael E. Soulé: Introductory Biology. McGraw-Hill, New York 1973
  • with Dennis C. Pirages: Ark II: Social Response to Environmental Imperatives. Viking Press, New York 1974
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: The End of Affluence. Ballantine Books, New York 1974
  • with Richard W. Holm & Irene L. Brown: Biology and Society. WH Freeman and Co., San Francisco 1976
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich & John P. Holdren: Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. WH Freeman, San Francisco 1977
  • with S. Shirley Feldman: The Race Bomb. Quadrangle Books, New York 1977
  • with Howell V. Daly & John T. Doyen: Introduction to Insect Biology and Diversity. McGraw-Hill, New York 1978
  • with Loy Bilderback & Anne H. Ehrlich: The Golden Door: Immigration, Mexico, and the United States. Ballantine Books, New York 1979
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. Random House, New York 1981
  • with Carl Sagan , Donald Kennedy & Walter Orr Roberts: The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War. WW Norton, New York 1984
  • The Machinery of Nature. Simon and Schuster, New York 1986
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: Earth. Methuen, London 1987
  • with J. Roughgarden : The Science of Ecology. MacMillan, New York 1987
  • with John P. Holdren (Ed.): The Cassandra Conference: Resources and the Human Predicament. Texas A&M Press, College Station 1988
  • with David S. Dobkin & Darryl Wheye: The Birder's Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds. Simon and Schuster, New York 1988
  • with Robert E. Ornstein: New World / New Mind: Moving Toward Conscious Evolution. Doubleday, New York 1989
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: The Population Explosion. Simon and Schuster, New York 1990
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: Healing the Planet. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, New York 1991
  • with David S. Dobkin & Darryl Wheye: Birds in Jeopardy: The Imperiled and Extinct Birds of the United States and Canada, Including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Stanford University Press, 1992
  • with Denis A. Saunders & Richard J. Hobbs (eds.): Nature Conservation 3: Reconstruction of Fragmented Ecosystems . Surrey Beatty & Sons, Chipping Norton 1993
  • with David S. Dobkin, Darryl Wheye & Stuart L. Pimm: The Birdwatcher's Handbook: A Guide to the Natural History of the Birds of Britain and Europe. Oxford University Press, 1994
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich & Gretchen C. Daily: The Stork and the Plow: The Equity Answer to the Human Dilemma. Putnam Publishing, New York 1995
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environment Rhetoric Threatens Our Future. Island Press , Washington (DC) 1996
  • A World of Wounds: Ecologists and the Human Dilemma. Ecology Institute, Oldendorf / Luhe 1997
  • Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Island Press, Washington (DC) 2000
  • with Andrew J. Beattie: Wild Solutions: How Biodiversity is Money in the Bank. Yale University Press, New Haven 2001
  • with Carol L. Boggs & Ward B. Watt (Eds.): Butterflies: Ecology and Evolution Taking Flight. University of Chicago Press, 2003, ISBN 0-226-06318-6 .
  • with Ilkka Hanski (Ed.): On the Wings of Checkerspots: A Model System for Population Biology. Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515827-X .
  • with Anne H. Ehrlich: One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future. Island Press, 2004, ISBN 1-55963-879-6 .

Web links

Commons : Paul R. Ehrlich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul R. Ehrlich . Google Scholar . Retrieved April 23, 2019.
  2. ^ Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich: The Population Bomb Revisited . In: The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development . tape 1 , no. 3 , 2009, What did The Bomb get wrong ?, p. 67 .
  3. ^ Dan Gardner: Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway . McClelland & Stewart, 2010. ISBN 0-7710-3519-5 . Pp. 228-231.
  4. ^ Katherine Kiel et al .: Luck or skill? An examination of the Ehrlich – Simon bet . In: Ecological Economics . tape 69 , 2010, p. 1365-1367 , doi : 10.1016 / j.ecolecon.2010.03.007 .
personal data
SURNAME Honestly, Paul R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Honestly, Paul Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia