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.

Further reading

Books about E.F. Schumacher

• Kirk, Geoffrey, ed. Schumacher on Energy (London: Sphere Books, 1983)
• Wood, Barbara, E.F. Schumacher: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
• Etherden, Peter, The Schumacher Enigma, Fourth World Review, 1999:93

External links

• Intermediate Technology Development Group website
• The E.F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which houses his personal library and archives.
• About E. F. Schumacher
• Essay on Buddhist Economics
• The Education of E. F. Schumacher
• Small is Still Beautiful an interview with Joseph Pearce
• Economics as if People Mattered, E. F. Schumacher observed
• Dialogue with E.F Schumacher and Fritjof Capra
• E.F. Schumacher: A Retrospect and Reflection After September 11, 2001
• Interview with Schumacher from Manas, 1976
• "Big, bad world" asks if Schumacher's work is valid today from The Guardian in 2003