Hermann heinrich gossen biography channel

Prussian economist (1810–1858)

Hermann Heinrich Gossen (7 September 1810 – 13 February 1858) was a German economist who is often regarded as the first to elaborate, in detail, a general theory of marginal utility.

Hermann heinrich gossen biography channel

Prior to Gossen, a number of economic theorists, including Gabriel Cramer,^[1]Daniel Bernoulli,^[2]William Forster Lloyd,^[3]Nassau William Senior,^[4] and Jules Dupuit^[5] had employed or asserted the significance of some notion of marginal utility.

But Cramer, Bernoulli, and Dupuit had focussed upon specific problems, Lloyd had not presented any applications of theory, and if Senior provided a detailed elaboration of the general theory he had developed,^[6] he had done so in language that caused his applications of theory to be missed by most readers.

Life and family background

Hermann Heinrich Gossen was born in Düren, Roer (department) (Roerdépartement, or Département de la Roer)