Alexander King (chemist)

Alexander King CMG CBE (26 January 1909 – 28 February 2007) was a British chemist and pioneer of the sustainable development movement who co-founded the Club of Rome in 1968 with the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei.

[2] At the time of the Club's founding, King was Director-General for Scientific Affairs at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

[5] With the outbreak of WWII, Sir Henry Tizard invited King to join the Ministry of Production as Deputy Scientific Adviser.

It was during this period that a letter from the Geigy Company in Switzerland to its Manchester branch office, detailing the composition of a new "mothballing agent" dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, was intercepted by the censor.

While the initial 1968 meeting at Accademia dei Lincei (Palazzo Corsini) was a failure, it led to the formation of a network of individuals with shared concerns about the environmental consequences of untrammelled global development.

"[16] In questioning prevalent assumptions about the inevitability and benefits of economic growth, the Club of Rome provoked sometimes fierce controversy and accusations of elitism.

[18] However, the Club of Rome's mission to bring awareness to the pressures of development on the environment – and in particular the publication of The Limits to Growth – according to King's obituary, "touched a raw nerve in the body politic.

King wrote a monograph, Science, Technology and the Quality of Life (1972) and co-authored An Eye to the Future (1975) for the London-based Institute for Cultural Research, which was founded and directed by the writer and thinker, Idries Shah, a fellow member of the Club of Rome.

On his mother's side, King was a descendant of the industrialist and philanthropist David Dale (1773–1806), the founder of the New Lanark Mills and father-in-law of the utopian socialist Robert Owen (1771–1858).