Thomas Robert Malthus had an enormous impact on scholars of biology, human populations and economics. Malthus was born southwest of London in Surrey. He entered Jesus College at Cambridge in 1784 and graduated four years later, at which time he was ordained in the Church of England. Malthus served for a brief time as a curate in a parish not far from where he was born. He later became a Fellow of Jesus College and also a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1805, Malhtus became a professor of history and political economy at the East India Company's college at Haileybury in Hertfordshire.

Malhtus is remembered not because of the holy orders that he took. Rather, his essays on population brought recognition to him worldwide. Malthus was not optimistic with regard to the lot of working humans at the time. He believed that the means of subsistence would always be...