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Alfred Marshall (July 26 1842–July 13 1924),
born in Bermondsey, London, England, became one of
the most influential economics | economists of his
time. His  book, Principles of Political Economy
(1890) brought together the theories of supply and
demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of
production into a coherent whole.  It became the
dominant economic textbook in England for a long
period.

==Biography==
Marshall grew up in the London suburb of Clapham
and was educated at the Merchant Taylor's School
and St John's College, Cambridge, where he
demonstrated an aptitude in mathematics. Although
he wanted early on, at the behest of his father,
to become a clergyman, his success at University
of Cambridge|Cambridge University led him to take
an academic career. He became a professor in 1868
specializing in political economy. He desired to
improve the mathematical rigor of economics and
transform it into a more scientific profession. In
the 1870s he wrote a small number of tracts on
international trade and the problems of
protectionism. In 1879, many of these works were
compiled together into a work entitled The Pure
Theory of Foreign Trade: The Pure Theory of
Domestic Values. In the same year (1879) he
published The Economics of Industry with his wife
Mary Paley Marshall.

Alfred had been Mary Paley's professor of
political economy at Cambridge and the two were
married in 1877, forcing Alfred to leave his
position at Cambridge in order to comply with
celibacy rules at the university. He became a
principal at University College, Bristol, again
lecturing on political economy. He perfected his
Economics of Industry and published it more widely
in England as an economic curriculum; its simple
form stood upon sophisticated theoretical
foundations. Marshall achieved a measure of fame
from this work, and upon the death of William
Jevons in 1881, Marshall became the leading
British economist of the scientific school of his
time.

Marshall returned to Cambridge to take the seat as
Professor of Political Economy, Cambridge
University|Professor of Political Economy in
December of 1884 on the death of Henry Fawcett. At
Cambridge he endeavored to create a new tripos for
economics, which he would only achieve in 1903.
Until that time, economics was taught under the
Historical and Moral Sciences Triposes which
failed to provide Marshall the kind of energetic
and specialized students he desired.

Marshall began work on his seminal work, the
Principles of Economics, in 1881, and he spent
much of the next decade at work on the treatise.
His plan for the work gradually extended to a
two-volume compilation on the whole of economic
thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to
worldwide acclaim that established him as one of
the leading economists of his time. The second
volume, which was to address international
trade|foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations,
taxation, and collectivism, was never published at
all.

Over the next two decades he worked to complete
his second volume of the Principles, but his
unyielding attention to detail and ambition for
completeness prevented him from mastering the
work's breadth. The work was never finished and
many other, lesser works he had begun work on - a
memorandum on trade policy for the Chancellor of
the Exchequer in the 1890s, for instance - were
left incomplete for the same reasons.

His health problems had gradually grown worse
since the 1880s, and in 1908 he retired from the
university. He hoped to continue work on his
Principles but his health continued to deteriorate
and the project had continued to grow with each
further investigation. The outbreak of the World
War I|First World War in 1914 prompted him to
revise his examinations of the international
economy and in 1919 he published Industry and
Trade at the age of 77. This work was a more
empirical treatise than the largely theoretical
Principles, and for that reason it  failed to
attract as much acclaim from theoretical
economists. In 1923, he published Money, Credit,
and Commerce, a broad amalgam of previous economic
ideas, published and unpublished, stretching back
a half-century.

From 1890 to 1924 he was the respected father of
the economic profession and to most economists for
the half-century after his death, the venerable
grandfather. He had shied away from controversy
during his life in a way that previous leaders of
the profession had not, although his
even-handedness drew great respect and even
reverence from fellow economists, and his home at
Balliol Croft had no shortage of distinguished
guests. His students at Cambridge became leading
figures in economics, including John Maynard
Keynes and Arthur Cecil Pigou. His most important
legacy was creating a respected, academic,
scientifically-founded profession for economists
in the future that set the tone of the field for
the remainder of the twentieth century.

Marshall died at his home, Balliol Croft, in
Cambridge, England on July 13 1924 at the age of
81. He is buried in the
Ascension_Parish_Burial_Ground%2C_Cambridge|Ascens
ion Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge.

==Theoretical contributions==

Marshall's economics were an extension of the work
of John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, and David
Ricardo. He downplayed the contributions of
certain other economists to his work, such as
Vilfredo Pareto and Jules Dupuit, and only
grudgingly acknowledged the influence of William
Jevons himself.

Marshall's influence on codifying economic thought
is difficult to deny. He was the first to
rigorously attach price determination to supply
and demand functions; modern economists owe the
linkage between price shifts and curve shifts to
Marshall. Marshall was an important part of the
"marginalist revolution;" the idea that consumers
attempt to equal prices to their marginal utility
was another contribution of his. The price
elasticity of demand was presented by Marshall as
an extension of these ideas. Economic welfare,
divided into producer surplus and consumer
surplus, was contributed by Marshall, and indeed,
the two are sometimes described eponymously as
'Marshallian surplus.' He used this idea of
surplus to rigorously analyze the effect of taxes
and price shifts on market welfare. Marshall also
identified quasi-rents.

==See also==

* Marshall Jevons, a pseudonym partly derived from
Marshall's name

==External links==
*http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Marshall.
html Concise encyclopedia of economics entry on
Alfred Marshall
*http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll
3/marshall/ A collection of Marshall's published
works
*http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~multimed/theorie
/economics/marshall/bio/Marshall.html An extensive
entry on Marshall's life and works