The Biographical series includes materials regarding Lotka's appointments, resumes and obituaries, correspondence, Lotka's last will and testament, census bureau information regarding his wife, Romola Beattie Lotka, and Lotka's class notes from Birmingham University.
Arranged alphabetically by document type or subject.
Appointments, 1934-1947
Correspondence, 1881-1949
Last Will and Testament, 1937-1949
Lotka Library, 1942-1957
Lotka, Romola Beattie, 1905-1935
Photographs, 1940-1949
Requests for Literature, 1929-1966
Resumes and Biography, 1939-1950
School Work, 1899-1907
Miscellaneous, 1925-1926, 1943
The Professional Organizations series documents Lotka's involvement with several statistical and scientific organizations, including the American Statistical Association (ASA), the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, and the Population Association of America (PAA). The papers include correspondence, papers, pamphlets, meeting agendas, conference information, and administrative materials for each organization. The series also includes correspondence between Lotka and other scholars discussing the organizations.
Divided into two sections, correspondence and organizations. Each section is arranged alphabetically.
Fairchild, Henry Pratt, 1948
Kiser, Clyde V, 1947
Lorimer, Frank, 1948-1949
Mauco, Georges, 1947-1949
Notestein, Frank W, 1949
Osborn, Fred, 1948
Taeuber, Conrad, 1948-1949
Thompson, Warren S, 1947
Organizations, 1930-1950
Agenda, 1943
Presidential Address, 1942-1943
Statistical Congresses, 1946-1947
Ecological Society of America, 1948
Administrative, 1930-1946
Correspondence, 1948
Geneva, 1949
Population Union, 1947
Statement for Osborn, 1948
Statutes, English, 1947-1948
Statutes, French, 1947
Series 3: Scholarship, 1872-1954
The Scholarship series contains materials related to Lotka's writings, including articles, speeches, and lectures. The majority of the papers are composed of Lotka's notes and articles he collected about a variety of subjects. The papers also include drafts of articles and speeches, data tables, clippings, correspondence, and offprints of his articles. The series includes materials related to his publications Elements of Physical Biology and Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques. The series also includes Lotka's correspondence with Robert R. Kuczynski and Vito Volterra regarding their interpretation of Lotka's works in their writings.
Arranged alphabetically by publication or subject.
Articles About Lotka, 1934-1950
Articles By Lotka, 1904-1950
1904-1920, 1904-1920
1920-1948, 1920-1948
Bibliography, 1907-1948
Figures and Book Excerpts, undated
Replies and Reviews, 1923-1950
Vital Statistics, 1946
Correspondence, 1929-1949
Bernadelli, H, 1941-1943
Frisch, Ragnar, 1948
L, 1948-1949
Preinreich, Gabriel A. D, 1938-1940
Sharpe, R, 1929-1943
Chapter 16: "Water Cycle", 1925-1941
Chapter 28: "The Adjustors", 1930
Chapter 34: "Conclusions", 1872-1932
Addenda, 1938-1947
Congratulations, 1925-1926
Correspondence, 1924-1941
General Research, 1892-1941
Misprints, 1926-1944
Proofs, 1924
Reviews, 1925-1949
Second Edition Research, 1922-1948
Tables to be Reused, undated
Works Referenced, 1909-1928
Works Referenced, 1909-1928
Population Analysis, 1889-1938
Age Distribution, 1925-1936
Austria, circa 1931
Balance of Births and Deaths, 1929
Bibliography, 1927-1933
Birthrates, 1924-1937
Births, 1925-1933
Burgdorfer, Dr, 1929
Canada, 1930
Connor, T. R, 1925
Divorce, circa 1930
England and Wales, 1895-1932
Expectation of Life, 1925-1935
Family, 1930-1936
Fertility, 1906-1935
Fisher, R. A, 1927
Food, 1925
French Population, 1929
Frequency Curves, 1925-1930
Generations, 1931
Germany, 1911, 1933
Gompertz Law, undated
Henderson's Method, undated
Immigration, 1925-1931
Life Table Constants, undated
Logistic Population, 1923-1930
Marriage, 1922-1938
Methods and Formulas, 1927-1934
Mortality, 1931-1932
New Zealand, 1931-1934
Optimum Population, 1927-1931
Orphanhood, 1926
Periodicity, undated
Population Economics, 1926-1930
"The Adventure of Life", 1942
Baltimore Lectures, undated
Birth Control, 1939
British Homelessness, undated
Calendar Reform, 1943-1944
Capture, undated
Computation Sheets, circa 1930
The Cost of War, 1916-1945
Displacement of Equilibrium, undated
Dunlop's Formula, 1924
Evolution of Elements, Electrical Nature of Matter and Earth's Crust, Atmosphere, etc, 1913-1924
Greater Consciousness, 1921-1922
Growth and Form, 1943-1945
The Human Cost of War, 1944-1946
Killings by Animals, 1911-1923
Lecture on Population Analysis, 1936
Lienau, C. C, 1944-1946
Linguistics, 1937-1947
Logistic Computations, undated
Moving Equilibria, 1920-1921
Paris Paper, 1935-1947
Population Analysis, undated
Population Analysis Survey, undated
Progeny of Finite Population, 1942
Rashesky, 1944
Recurrent Series, undated
Renewal Theory, undated
Speed of Machinery, 1923
Sur une Equation Integrale et Analyse Demographique et Industrielle, Hodwiger and Lotka, undated
Theory of Capture III, undated
Unfinished Papers, undated
Various Articles, 1922-1928
V. M. Cost of War, 1944-1946
Wicksell, 1934
Woofer, T. J. Jr, 1945-1947
Source Materials, 1905-1949
Gumbel, undated
Manuscripts, undated
Needed Population Research, undated
Unsorted, 1905-1949
Unsorted, 1905-1949
Unsorted, 1905-1949
Unsorted, 1905-1949
Drafts, circa 1935-1949
Manuscript, 1937
Proofs, undated
Unsorted, 1949
Topical Files, 1907-1949
Bibliography 1907-1942, circa 1942
Biograms, 1913-1925
Bio-Kinetics, 1926
Cadence and Meaning, undated
Capture, undated
Chicago, undated
Columbia University Press, 1910-1912
Communism, circa 1948
Consciousness, 1944
Curve Sheet, undated
Day's Work of a Monarch, 1911-1921
Dynamics of Evolution, 1912-1917
Economics, 1946
French Monograph, 1907-1947
Additional Ideas, 1947
Notes, undated
Revise, 1907-1947
Revise, 1907-1947
Translation, 1931-1947
Translation Reprints, 1946
Instinct of Workmanship, 1910-1919
Leisure, 1928
Limiting Factors, 1920
"Man, Hardworking Animal", undated
Nuclear Physics, 1940-1947
Optimum Population, circa 1936
Orphans, 1928-1929
Pearl Age Distribution, circa 1930
Philosophy of Science, 1942-1947
Population Analysis, 1926-1944
Princeton University Press, 1948
Science and Mysticism, undated
Servo-Mechanism, 1948
Talking to Oneself, undated
Tessier Monographs, 1934-1949
Theory of Capture, 1928
Titles for Articles, undated
Unfinished Articles, undated
United States Patent 1176384, 1916
Value of the Individual, 1912
Value of a Man Critique, 1926-1948
Vincent, Paul, 1946
Unsorted, 1918-1925
Volterra, Vito, 1904-1934
Working Notes, 1925-1943
The Oversized Materials series contains glass slides used by Lotka for visual aids during a lecture, a scrapbook of Lotka's writings, charts and graphs, a certificate of membership for the Committee on Medicine and Public Health for the 1939 New York World's Fair, and panoramic photographs of groups at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company events and delegates to the Eighth American Scientific Congress.
Arranged by size.
- Scope and Contents
Lotka's papers document his scholarship and his involvement in professional organizations and include drafts of his works, his notes and research materials, and correspondence. The majority of the papers are related to his research on population analysis and his book Elements of Physical Biology.
Please see the series descriptions in the contents list for additional information about individual series.
- Arrangement
The Papers have been arranged in four series:
- Collection Creator Biography:
Lotka
Alfred J. Lotka (1880-1949), a statistician for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, was a significant contributor to the field of demography. He was a pioneer in the study of population dynamics and conducted research on the mathematical theory of evolution and the mathematical analysis of populations. In addition to his work on demography, he published in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematical social sciences such as economics.
Alfred James Lotka was born on March 2, 1880 in Lemberg, Austria (now Lviv, Ukraine) to Jacques and Marie Doebely Lotka, both American citizens. He married Romola Beattie on January 5, 1935. Lotka's early education was in France, Germany, and England. He began study at Birmingham University, England in 1898 and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1901. He then spent a year studying chemistry at Leipzig University from 1901 to 1902. During this period, he developed his interest in the mathematical theory of evolution, which would be the foundation for his life's work.
Lotka came to the United States in 1902, where he worked as an assistant chemist at the General Chemical Company in New York until 1908. While there, he published his first papers on the mathematical theory of evolution and on population analysis. He entered Cornell University as a graduate student and assistant in physics in 1908 and received his M.A. degree in 1909.
Following his education at Cornell University, Lotka worked as an examiner at the United States Patent Office (1909), assistant physicist at the United States Bureau of Standards (1909-1911), and as an editor of the Scientific American Supplement (1911-1914). He received his Doctor of Science degree from Birmingham University in 1912. Lotka then returned to General Chemical Company, where he worked as a chemist from 1914 to 1919. While he held these various positions, Lotka continued his investigations into the mathematical theory of evolution. From 1922 to 1924, he accepted a temporary research appointment in Raymond Pearl's Human Biology group at Johns Hopkins University to focus on his studies. The result of his work was the publication Elements of Physical Biology (1925).
In 1924, Lotka began his employment at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York City, where he would stay until he retired in 1947. He was the supervisor of mathematical research in the Statistical Bureau (1924-1933), a general supervisor (1933-1934), and an assistant statistician (1934-1947). While there, he also continued to develop the demographic analysis he had started during his undergraduate education. His book Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques, published in two parts in 1934 and 1939 in Paris, summarized the essentials of his work on the mathematical theory of evolution and on the mathematics of population analysis.
Lotka was active in many professional organizations, serving as President of the Population Association of America (1938-1939), Vice President (1938-1939) and President (1942) of the American Statistical Association, Vice President of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems (1948-1949), and Chairman of the United States National Committee of the Union (1948-1949). He was a fellow of the American Public Health Association, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and was a member of many learned societies.
Throughout his career, Lotka wrote more than one hundred scientific papers, published in academic and technical journals as well as popular magazines, in the United States and abroad. His writings encompassed a wide variety of subjects, including mathematical analyses of population and the theory of evolution, actuarial mathematics applied to problems of population and industrial replacement, theoretical and applied demography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and other mathematical social sciences such as economics. In addition to the books Elements of Physical Biology and Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques, which together summarize the essentials of his research, Lotka was the co-author of three books in the field of public health: The Money Value of a Man (1930), Length of Life (1936), and Twenty-five Years of Health Progress (1937). All three were co-written with Louis I. Dublin, Vice President and Statistician at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
During his retirement, Lotka revised and translated portions of Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques into English. He died on December 5, 1949 in Red Bank, New Jersey.
- Acquisition:
This collection was donated to the Princeton University Library Special Collections Department in May 1952 , with an addition in May 1953 .
- Custodial History
The Alfred J. Lotka Papers were donated to the Princeton University Library Special Collections Department, through the efforts of Frank Notestein. The papers were transferred to the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library in August 2002.
- Appraisal
The materials separated from this collection include personal papers and duplicate materials.
- Sponsorship:
These papers were processed with the generous support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the John Foster and Janet Avery Dulles Fund.
- Processing Information
This collection was processed by Adriane Hanson, Christopher Shannon, and Jessie Thompson in 2006. Finding aid written by Adriane Hanson in June 2006.
- Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research use.
- Conditions Governing Use
Single copies may be made for research purposes. To cite or publish quotations that fall within Fair Use, as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission is required. For instances beyond Fair Use, it is the responsibility of the researcher to determine whether any permissions related to copyright, privacy, publicity, or any other rights are necessary for their intended use of the Library's materials, and to obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders, if they have not already done so. Princeton University Library's Special Collections does not charge any permission or use fees for the publication of images of materials from our collections, nor does it require researchers to obtain its permission for said use. The department does request that its collections be properly cited and images credited. More detailed information can be found on the Copyright, Credit and Citations Guidelines page on our website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the Ask Us! form.
- Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.
- Credit this material:
Alfred J. Lotka Papers; Public Policy Papers, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
- Permanent URL:
- http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/nv935285j
- Location:
-
Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library65 Olden StreetPrinceton, NJ 08540, USA
- Storage Note:
- Mudd Manuscript Library (scamudd): Box 1-34
- Bibliography
The following sources were consulted during the preparation of the biographical note: "Lotka, Alfred J. (1880-1949)" in New Palgrave A Dictionary of Economics, eds. John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, Macmillan Reference LTD, 1998. Materials from Series 1: Biographical; Alfred J. Lotka Papers; Public Policy Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
- Subject Terms:
- Demography.
Economics -- 20th century.
Evolution (Biology) -- Mathematical models.
Population research. - Genre Terms:
- Correspondence
Notes.
Writings. - Names:
- American statistical association
International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
Lotka, Alfred J. (Alfred James) (1880-1949)