E. F. Schumacher

Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was an internationally influential economic thinker with a professional background as a statistician and economist in Britain. He served as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became well-known in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s. He is best known for his critique of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies. According to London's Times Literary Supplement, his book Small Is Beautiful is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. It was soon translated into many languages and brought international fame to Schumacher, after which Schumacher was invited to many international conferences, university guest speaker lectures and consultations. Schumacher's basic development theories have been summed up in the catch-phrases Intermediate Size and Intermediate Technology. Schumacher's other notable work is A Guide For The Perplexed, which is a critique of materialist scientism and an exploration of the nature and organisation of knowledge.

Early life

Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911. His father was a professor of political economy. The younger Schumacher studied in Bonn and Berlin, then afterwards in England as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the 1930s, and later at Columbia University in New York City, earning a diploma in economics. He became a professional economist, but his wide-ranging mind never confined itself to a single discipline.

Related Topics:
Bonn - Germany - 1911 - Political economy - Berlin - England - Rhodes Scholar - Oxford - 1930s - Columbia University - New York City - Diploma - Economics

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