E. F. Schumacher

E. F. Schumacher
Photograph of Schumacher from the cover of Small Is Beautiful, 1973
Born
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher

(1911-08-16)16 August 1911
Died4 September 1977(1977-09-04) (aged 66)
Switzerland
NationalityBritish
Academic career
InstitutionUniversity of Oxford
Columbia University
Alma materUniversity of Bonn
University of Berlin
New College, Oxford
Columbia University
ContributionsAppropriate technology
Buddhist economics

Ernst Friedrich Schumacher CBE (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was a British statistician and economist who is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies.[1] He served as Chief Economic Advisor to the British National Coal Board from 1950 to 1970, and founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now known as Practical Action) in 1966.

In 1995, his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered was ranked by The Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II.[2] In 1977 he published A Guide for the Perplexed as a critique of materialistic scientism and as an exploration of the nature and organisation of knowledge.

  1. ^ Biography on the inner dustjacket of Small Is Beautiful
  2. ^ The Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 1995, p. 39