Donella Meadows

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) was a systems scientist who made complexity legible. She led the team that created The Limits to Growth (1972), the first global computer model of resource constraints.

Her most influential essay, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” (1999), ranks twelve ways to change systems — from weak (adjusting parameters) to strong (changing paradigms and goals). The most powerful interventions are often counterintuitive and resisted.

Her posthumous Thinking in Systems (2008) remains the clearest introduction to systems dynamics: stocks, flows, feedback loops, delays. She wrote with the rare combination of rigor and accessibility that makes complex ideas feel obvious once understood.

Meadows modeled the systems thinking she taught — always asking about connections, delays, and unintended consequences.

Related: [[systems]], [[emergence]], [[ecology]], [[galls-law]]