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.

Selected bibliography

• Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973, ISBN 0061317780); a 25th anniversary edition was published (ISBN 0881791695)
• A Guide For The Perplexed (1977, ISBN 022401496X; still in paperback, ISBN 0060906111)
• This I Believe and Other Essays (1977; reissued, ISBN 1870098668)
• Good Work (1979, ISBN 0060138572)