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Carl Menger (February 23, 1840 – February
26, 1921) was the founder of the Austrian School
of economics.

Menger was born in Nowy Sacz Poland (at that time
Neu Sandec Austria|Austrian Galicia (Central
Europe)|Galicia). He was the son of a wealthy
family of minor nobility, his father was a lawyer.
After attending Gymnasium (school)|Gymnasium he
studied law at the Universities of Prague and
Vienna and later received a doctorate in
jurisprudence from the University of Krakow. In
the 1860's Menger left school and enjoyed a stint
as a journalist reporting and analyzing market
news, first at the Lemberger Zeitung in Lwów and
later at the Wiener Zeitung in Vienna.

During the course of his newspaper work he noticed
a discrepancy between what the classical economics
he was taught in school said about price|price
determination and what real world market
participants believed. In 1867 Menger began a
study of political economy which culminated in
1871 with the publication of his Principles of
Economics ("Grundsätze der
Volkswirtschaftslehre"), thus becoming the father
of the Austrian School of economic thought. At the
time Principles was largely ignored, although they
were later credited as a contribution to the
Neoclassical Revolution.

In 1872 Menger was enrolled into the law faculty
at the University of Vienna and spent the next
several years teaching finance and political
economy both in seminars and lectures to a growing
number of students. In 1873 he received the
university's chair of economic theory at the very
young age of 33.  

In 1876 Menger began tutoring Archduke Crown
Prince Rudolf of Austria|Rudolf von Habsburg, the
Crown Prince of Austria in political economy and
statistics. For two years Menger accompanied the
Prince in his travels, first through Europe and
then later through the British Isles. He is also
thought to have assisted the crown prince in the
composition of a pamphlet, published anonymously
in 1878, which was highly critical of the higher
Austrian aristocracy. His association with the
Prince would last until Rudolf's suicide in 1889
(see the Mayerling Affair). 

In 1878 the Emperor (Rudolf's father) appointed
him to the Chair of Political Economy in Vienna.
The title of Hofrat was conferred on him and was
appointed to the Austrian Herrenhaus in 1900.  

Ensconced in his professorship he set about
refining and defending the positions he took and
methods he utilized in Principles, the result of
which was the 1883 publication of Investigations
into the Method of the Social Sciences with
Special Reference to Economics. The book caused a
firestorm of debate, members of the Historical
School of economics began to derisively call
Menger and his students the "Austrian School" to
emphasize their departure from mainstream economic
thought in Germany. In 1884 Menger responded with
the pamphlet The Errors of Historicism in German
Economics and launched the infamous
Methodenstreit, or methodological debate, between
the Historical school and the Austrian School.
During this time Menger began to attract
like-minded disciples who would go on to make
their own mark on the field of economics, most
notably Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von
Wieser. 

In the late 1880's Menger was appointed to head a
commission to reform the Austrian monetary system.
Over the course of the next decade he authored a
plethora of articles which would revolutionize
monetary theory including The Theory of
Capital(1888) and Money(1892). Largely due to his
pessimism about the state of German scholarship
Menger resigned his professorship in 1903 to
concentrate on study. He died in 1921.

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