Euler and the geometric growth of populations (1748–1761)

Nicolas Bacaër ()
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Nicolas Bacaër: IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)

Chapter Chapter 3 in A Short History of Mathematical Population Dynamics, 2011, pp 11-20 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Euler wrote on several occasions on population dynamics. In his 1748 treatise, Introduction to Analysis of the Infinite, the chapter dealing with the exponential function contained four examples on the exponential growth of a population. In 1760 he published an article combining this exponential growth with an age structure for the population. This work is a forerunner of the theory of “stable” populations, which was developed in the twentieth century and plays an important role in demography. In 1761 Euler also helped Süssmilch with the second edition of his treatise on demography. He worked out an interesting model, which is a kind of variant of Fibonacci’s sequence, but did not publish his detailed analysis.

Keywords: Life Table; Geometric Progression; Fibonacci Sequence; Integral Calculus; Decimal Logarithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1007/978-0-85729-115-8_3

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