In the 50 years that have passed since Alfred Latka's death in 1949 his position as the father of mathematical demography has been secure. With his first demographic papers in 1907 and 1911 (the latter co- authored with F. R. Sharpe) he laid the foundations for stable population theory, and over the next decades both largely completed it and found convenient mathematical approximations that gave it practical applica- tions. Since his time, the field...