Albert Allen Bartlett | |
|---|---|
 Bartlett with Los Alamos wartime security badge (c. 1944) | |
| Born | (1923-03-21)21 March 1923 |
| Died | 7 September 2013(2013-09-07) (aged 90) Boulder, Colorado, U.S. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Colgate University (BA) Harvard University (MA,PhD) |
| Known for | Population growth Sustainability |
| Spouse | Eleanor Bartlett |
| Awards | AAPT Distinguished Service Citation(1970) Thomas Jefferson Award(1972) Robert L. Stearns Award(1974) Robert A. Millikan Award(1981) AAPT Melba Newell Phillips Award(1990) M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education(2005) Lifetime Achievement Pacesetter Award(2006) Global Media Award for Excellence in Population Reporting(2008) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Los Alamos National Laboratory University of Colorado Boulder |
Albert Allen Bartlett (March 21, 1923 – September 7, 2013)[2] was an American professor of physics at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder. As of July 2001, Professor Bartlett had lectured over 1,742 times since September 1969 onArithmetic, Population, and Energy.[3][4] Bartlett regarded the word combination "sustainable growth" as anoxymoron, and argued that modest annual percentagepopulation increases could lead toexponential growth. He therefore regardedhuman overpopulation as "The Greatest Challenge" facing humanity.
Bartlett received a B.A. inphysics atColgate University (1944), and an M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1951) in physics atHarvard University. Bartlett joined the faculty at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder in September 1950. In 1978 he was national president of theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers. He was afellow of theAmerican Physical Society and of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1969 and 1970 he served two terms as the elected chair of the four-campus faculty council at the university. He won theRobert A. Millikan award.[5]
Bartlett viewedsustainable growth as acontradiction. His view was that modest percentage growth will equate to huge escalations over relatively short periods of time.[8]
Over time, Bartlett argued, compound growth can yield enormous increases. For example, an investor earning a constant annual 7% return on their investment would find his or her capital doubling within 10 years. He applied the same exponential power tohuman population, and argued this would have calamitous results. He argued that a population of 10,000 individuals, if it were to grow at a constant rate of 7% per annum, would reach a population size of 10 million after 100 years.[9]
Bartlett regarded what he viewed as the failure to understandexponential growth as "The Greatest Challenge" facing humanity, and promotedsustainable living; he was an early advocate on the topic ofoverpopulation. He opposed thecornucopian school of thought (as advocated by people such asJulian Lincoln Simon), and referred to it as "The NewFlat Earth Society".[10]
J. B. Calvert (1999) has proposed that Bartlett's law[11] will result in the exhaustion of petrochemical resources caused by exponential growth of the world population (in line with theMalthusian Growth Model).
Bartlett made statements relating to sustainability:
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
and hisGreat Challenge:
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
Bartlett died on September 7, 2013, at the age of 90.[5]
In August 2013, a month before Bartlett's death, the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder offered training on giving his presentation; the team "came together because they believe so strongly in Dr. Bartlett's message and want to ensure it continues to be delivered well into the future".[13]
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