1 Alfred J . Lotka and the Mathematics of Population

Alfred J. Lotka, considered as one of the founders of mathematical demography, wrote seminal articles and books from 1907 to his death in 1949. He elaborated in particular the concepts of stable age-distribution of a population and of natural rate of increase of a population. His scientific work is extensive and various: he wrote on malaria epidemiology, on population forecasts, on sterility in American marriages, on the extinction of families, on longevity, on the law of urban concentration, etc. With Louis I. Dublin, who was then also statistician at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, in New York, he published in 1930 the first edition of The money value of a man and, in 1936, the first edition of Length of Life. A Study of the Life Table. Lotka’s contribution to the mathematical demography is summarized in his Théorie analytique des associations biologiques, a book he published in French.