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Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist and clergyman. Malthus (1766-1834) believed that population growth would outstrip food supplies, with disastrous results. He published his theory in his famous "Essay on the Principle of Population" which first appeared in 1798, advocating population control as the solution to the impending crisis. Malthus had not anticipated the influence of the scientific and technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, however, and his predictions of doom proved false.