Heredity, Natural Selection, and Evolution

Species and Population

Who was the first person to study populations mathematically?

In 1798, British cleric and scholar Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) attempted to inform people that the human population, like any other population, had the potential to increase exponentially. Malthusian ideas were not well received, as he predicted the rate of population growth would exceed the ability of the land to produce food. His work was later used by Charles Darwin to explain his theory of natural selection.