Thomas Robert Malthus (February 13, 1766 – December 23, 1834) was an English cleric and scholar best known for his work on the economics and demographics of population growth.  Born the seventh child to a family of independent means in Surrey, he was educated at Cambridge and became a curate in the Church of England and later a professor of History at the East India Company College.  His key perceptions were that populations grew geometrically while food supplies grew arithmetically, so that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”.  He believed this condition was a natural law divinely imposed to encourage and even require virtuous behavior.  He was an active member of the intellectual community as a member of the Royal Society, a founding member of the Political Economy Club, one of ten associates of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of the first fellows of the Statistical Society.  He married Harriet Eckersall in 1804 and fathered two children. He died in 1804 and is buried in Bath Abbey.