Thorkil Kristensen (9 October 1899 – 26 June 1989) was a Danish politician, finance minister, professor in national economy, and

futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

Early years

Kristensen was born a son of a farmer in Fløjstrup close to

Vejle Vejle () is a city in Denmark, in the southeast of the Jutland Peninsula at the head of Vejle Fjord, where the Vejle River and Grejs River and their valleys converge. It is the site of the councils of Vejle Municipality ('' kommune'') and th ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

. Between 1938–1945 he was professor at the University of Aarhus and between 1947–1960 at the

Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School (Danish'': Handelshøjskolen i København'') often abbreviated and referred to as CBS (also in Danish), is a public university situated in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered one of the most prestigious business schoo ...

Career

Thorkil Kristensen was elected to the Danish Parliament 1945 and became finance minister under Knud Kristiansen (1945–1947) and Erik Eriksen (1950–1953). Throughout his life he worked with difficult economic problems. Among people of his own party and opposing parties, he enjoyed great respect because of his broad knowledge of economics. He came to disagree on economic policy with his party, Venstre, and left the party in 1960. After his exit from politics, he was secretary general of the

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...

from 1960-1969. He was the founder of the

Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (Danish: ''Instituttet for Fremtidsforskning'') is a Danish not-for-profit, independent futures think tank founded in 1969 by Thorkil Kristensen, former OECD Secretary-General for the betterment of our ...

(CIFS), making it one of the first futures research institutes on the European continent. He was managing director at CIFS from 1970–1988. He participated in the Club of Rome which attracted considerable public attention with its report,

Limits to Growth ''The Limits to Growth'' (''LTG'') is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential economic and population growth with finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer model to simula ...

, which has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best selling environmental book in world history.

Selected publications

* Kristensen, Thorkil. ''The economic world balance.'' The economic world balance. (1960). * Kristensen, Thorkil. ''The brain drain and development planning.'' No. 29. International Institute for Educational Planning, 1968. * Kristensen, Thorkil. ''The food problem of developing countries.'' Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1968. * Kristensen, Thorkil. ''Development in rich and poor countries: a general theory with statistical analyses.'' Praeger, 1974.' Articles, a selection * Kristensen, Thorkil. "Five Years of OECD." ''European Yearbook'' 13 (1967): 1000-113.

References

External links

Truman Library - Thorkil Kristensen Oral History Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kristensen, Thorkil 1899 births 1989 deaths Danish economists Futurologists Danish Finance Ministers Members of the Folketing Venstre (Denmark) politicians Academic staff of Copenhagen Business School People from Vejle Municipality 20th-century Danish politicians