Hermann Heinrich Gossen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Heinrich Gossen (September 7, 1810 in Düren - February 13, 1858 in Cologne) was a Prussian economist. In his book Die Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fließenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln ('The development of the laws of human intercourse and the rules of human action'), he was the first to describe the theory of marginal utility.

Gossen studied in Bonn under the Napoleonic French occupation, then worked in the Prussian administration until retiring in 1847, after which he sold insurance until his death.

Die Entwicktlung, published in Braunschweig in 1854, was poorly received, as Gossen wrote it in a dense, heavily mathematical style which was quite unpopular at the time. Although Gossen himself declared that his work was comparable in its significance to the innovations of Copernicus, few others agreed; most copies of the book were destroyed and, today, only a few original copies exist.

In the 1870s, Leon Walras, Carl Menger, and William Stanley Jevons each reintroduced the theory of marginal utility. During discussions of which of those three had been the first to formulate the theory, a colleague of Jevons discovered a copy of Die Entwicktlung. Gossens was recognised as the original author, and his work was reformulated in a less mathematical way, to make it more intelligible to the public.