Paul Ehrlich, founder and lifelong champion of the MAHB, died on March 13, 2026, at the age of 93. This page collects the tributes, commentaries, and obituaries that followed.
You can read the MAHB’s tribute to Paul, written by Joan Diamond, the Executive Director.
Please also scroll to the bottom of the page to read personal notes shared with us.
If you would like to share a memory, reflection, or tribute, we warmly invite you to do so. You can leave a comment below using Disqus, or contact us here or by email at info@mahbonline.org.
Selected Tributes and Coverage
From Stanford University
Biologist and environmentalist Paul Ehrlich has died
Ehrlich was a prolific researcher, author, and activist throughout his career, and his work garnered many prestigious awards, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize, an annual award established to recognize research in disciplines not eligible for Nobel prizes.
From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Understanding the fragility of our planetary home: The legacy of Paul Ehrlich
Ehrlich’s commitment to science, his willingness to sound the alarm, his teachings that reached and influenced thousands of today’s scientists and activists, have made it possible to see and work for a better future. That’s a legacy worth acknowledging and remembering.
From Richard Heinberg, Resilience
Paul Ehrlich: A Tribute
He was as insightful as he was prolific, and his work deserves continued attention. We need more like him. But he was a man of his time, and the time for warnings is drawing to a close as the age of consequences dawns.
From Jonathan Stack and Dr. Doug Stein of World Vasectomy Day
A Tribute to Paul R. Ehrlich from World Vasectomy Day
In his passing, the world has lost one of its most passionate, most honest, and most stubbornly hopeful voices — a man who spent more than seventy years telling us the truth about the planet we inhabit, even when we didn’t want to hear it.
From Population Connection
Population Connection’s statement on Paul Ehrlich’s passing
Dr. Ehrlich was incredibly intelligent and forward thinking. He had an impressive grasp on today’s many interconnected socio-environmental crises. His sharp wit and charisma made him a very effective speaker, and we are grateful for his enormous contribution to the environmental movement.
Reflecting on Paul Ehrlich’s legacy
Ehrlich was deeply critical of the growth-dependent, extractivist systems that are fueling climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and pollution, as well as poor health and extreme inequalities. He was also outspoken about the evils of misogyny and the right of women to experience the same opportunities and level of respect as men.
From The Overpopulation Project
Goodbye Paul Ehrlich
Over time, however, Ehrlich became best known for bringing scientific attention to the global consequences of rapid human population growth and environmental degradation. He helped introduce broad audiences to the idea that humanity’s demands on the planet were exceeding Earth’s ecological limits.
From Mike Hamilton
Pebbles on the Track: Paul Ehrlich and the Long Arc of Conservation Biology
…he was right about the things that matter. Not about every timeline, not about every specific prediction, but about the fundamental relationship between a growing human enterprise and a finite biosphere. He was right that scientists have a responsibility to speak publicly about what they know. He was right that the erosion of empirical reasoning — his “endarkenment” — poses a threat as grave as any ecological crisis. And he was right that the work must continue regardless of the odds.
From The Times of Israel
A Life in Defense of the Earth: The Legacy of Paul Ehrlich
Now that he is no longer with us, we are left with Ehrlich’s immense intellectual and ethical legacy. As he reminded us time and again, denying the ecological consequences of a global population exceeding eight billion — or dismissing the concept of planetary carrying capacity –does not make those limits disappear. Nature is indifferent to ideology.
From Society of Environmental Journalists
SEJ Mourns Loss of Member Paul Ehrlich
Colleagues remember Ehrlich not only for his scientific contributions, but also for his willingness to engage publicly and challenge misinformation. He was a leading advocate for the idea that scientists have a responsibility to speak out on urgent environmental issues.
From UltimaBozza
Paul Ehrlich, the restless conscience of ecology, has died
Paul Ehrlich‘s passing is not just the loss of a scientist. It is the end of an uncomfortable, lucid, at times even brutal, but deeply necessary voice. Because Ehrlich did not just study the world: he put it in front of the mirror. And what he saw – and forced us to see – was not reassuring.
From Green Report
Addio a Paul Ehrlich, il grande ecologo che ha calcolato l’impatto della specie umana sui sistemi natural
The death of Paul Ehrlich, born in 1932, one of the greatest ecologists at international level, takes place in a dramatic moment for the whole world, in which the darkness of reason seems to predominate and the extraordinary scientific knowledge of the relationship between human and nature, to which Ehrlich has contributed in an incredible way, is increasingly opposed and denied by autocracies, populisms and sovereignisms, deliberately imbued with fake news and fake truths. (translated from Italian)
From Argentina Forestal
Murió el Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, biólogo referente mundial en biodiversidad y conciencia ambiental relacionada al crecimiento poblacional y la degradación de la naturaleza
Paul R. Ehrlich leaves an indelible mark on ecology and on those who chose the biological sciences as their path.
His thinking—often provocative, always committed—helped bring forward debates that remain urgent today: climate change, biodiversity loss, and the sustainable use of resources.
His legacy stands as an invitation to deepen scientific understanding while maintaining a critical perspective on the future of the planet. (translated from Spanish)
From The Conversation
Paul Ehrlich, often called alarmist for dire warnings about human harms to the Earth, believed scientists had a responsibility to speak out
And I see Ehrlich’s passing – along with others of his generation, such as Carl Sagan, E.O. Wilson and Jane Goodall – as a loss for a world that needs visionaries and public scientists now more than ever.
From The New York Times
Paul R. Ehrlich, Who Alarmed the World With ‘The Population Bomb,’ Dies at 93
His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement.
From 60 Minutes
Watch a tribute from 60 Minutes with over a million views
Humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths,” biologist Paul R. Ehrlich told 60 Minutes in 2023.
From Sustainable Population Australia
Death of Paul R Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, mourned by Sustainable Population Australia
Global human population has risen by 5 billion since the book was published, stretching the limits of sustainability and underlining that the general thrust of Ehrlich’s work was correct, raising obvious questions for the future.
From GrowthBusters
Episode 96: Paul Ehrlich (1932-2026): Behaving Against Our Interests
Ehrlich was most famous for authoring, with wife Anne Ehrlich, the bestselling 1968 book, The Population Bomb. While the book inspired widespread concern about human overpopulation, those who profited from growth worked to discredit the book, the scientist, and the notion that human numbers above 2 or 3 billion would seriously harm our life-supporting ecosystems. Undaunted by the critics, Ehrlich spent the next 58 years speaking the truth that we were testing very real limits to growth.
From Elisabeth Robson
Paul Ehrlich was early, not wrong
Ehrlich understood the limits to growth on a finite planet, but he underestimated how far we would go and how destructive our methods would become to avoid them.
The tragedy of his legacy is that we still misunderstand the lesson. We point to cheaper commodities and call it victory, even as the living world grows poorer.
From WWF IT
Scienza, il WWF ricorda il grande biologo ed ecologo Paul Ehrlich
The WWF joins the international scientific community and all those dedicated to the study and protection of our planet in mourning the passing of Paul Ehrlich, born in 1932, one of the most important ecologists and evolutionary and conservation biologists at the international level. (translated from Italian)
From Mongabay
Paul Ehrlich, ‘Population Bomb’ ecologist, dies at 93
In tributes published following his death, students and colleagues recall a scientist who was both intensely analytical and unusually comfortable in public argument. He wrote or co-wrote more than 40 books and hundreds of scientific papers. Some were technical; others addressed broad audiences. The range reflected a conviction that scientific knowledge carried civic obligations.
From Legal Planet
Paul Ehrlich and The Bet
The real lesson everyone misses about Paul Ehrlich and his famous wager.
Memorial from MemoriTree (where you can plant a tree in Paul’s memory)
Ehrlich’s contributions were recognized with numerous prestigious awards, including the Crafoord Prize in 1990, often considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in fields not covered by the Nobel categories. He also received the Heinz Award in the Environment in 1995, shared with his wife Anne H. Ehrlich, and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1998. These accolades underscored his significant impact on scientific thought and environmental advocacy.