Erich Zimmermann

Erich Walter Zimmermann, resource economist, was born in Mainz, Germany, on July 31, 1888 and died in Austin, United States of America, on February 16, 1961. He was an economist at the University of North Carolina and later the University of Texas. Zimmermann of the Institutional school of economics called his real world theory the functional theory of mineral resources. His followers have coined the term resourceship to describe the theory. Unlike traditional descriptive inventories, Zimmermann's method offered a synthetic assessment of the human, cultural, and natural factors that determine resource availability. Zimmermann rejected the assumption of fixity. Resources are not known, fixed things; they are what humans employ to service wants at a given time. To Zimmermann (1933, 3; 1951, 14), only human "appraisal" turns the "neutral stuff" of the earth into resources. What are resources today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa. According to Zimmermann, "resources are not, they become."