Review Article: Lewis Fry Richardson and the Study of the Causes of War

Abstract

Lewis Fry Richardson (1881–1953) was one of the most original thinkers ever to apply their minds to the study of war and its causes. In a strict sense he was an amateur in that he held no position of profit dedicated to the pursuit of these researches. He was always employed to do something else and did the research at week-ends and in his retirement. He never taught in the field or anything close to it. Nevertheless he was a prolific publisher on a very wide range of topics, as the two volumes of his collected papers published by Cambridge University Press testify, though his work rarely reached the international relations or political science community at the time. It was after his death that his work had its impact.