Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 - 23 December[1] 1834) was an English political economist and demographer who expressed views on population growth and noted the potential for populations to increase rapidly, and often faster than the food supply available to them. Commentators may refer to such a runaway scenario, as outlined in Malthus's treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population, as a "Malthusian catastrophe".