SCHUMACHER, ERNST FRIEDRICH

born Aug. 16, 1911, Bonn, Ger. died Sept. 4, 1977, Romont, Switz. British economist who developed the influential concepts of intermediate technology and small is beautiful. Schumacher, a German Rhodes scholar, studied at the University of Oxford, England, and Columbia University, U.S., in the early 1930s. In 1937 he settled in England; during World War II he worked on, among other projects, theories for full-employment policies and, under William Henry Beveridge, plans for Britain's postwar welfare state. In 195070 he also was adviser to Britain's nationalized coal industry. In that role he advocated continuing British coal production while emphasizing conservation in the face of a Middle Eastern oil glut and the growth of nuclear energy, which he opposed because of its intractable waste-disposal problems. After a visit to Burma (Myanmar) in 1955, Schumacher came to believe that, if poor countries adopted advanced technology, they could gain much higher productivity but little more employment. What was needed, he maintained, was an intermediate technology adapted to the unique needs of each developing country. Moreover, ever-increasing growth was not necessary; Schumacher, instead, urged the development of a noncapital-intensive, nonenergy-intensive society. In his book Small Is Beautiful (1973) he argued that capitalism brought higher living standards at the cost of deteriorating culture and that, because the earth's limited resources should be conserved, bignessin particular, large industries and large citiescould not be afforded.