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Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (February 8, 1845 -
February 13, 1926) was an Ireland|Irish polymath
who studied at Trinity College, Dublin before
obtaining a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford
where he subsequently became a professor. A deep
thinker, his contributions were far ahead of his
time.

Edgeworth was a highly influential figure in the
development of neo-classical economics. He was the
first to apply certain formal mathematical
techniques to individual decision making in
economics. He developed utility theory introducing
the indifference curve and the famous Edgeworth
box which is now familiar to undergraduates of
microeconomics. The high degree of originality
demonstrated in his most important book on
economics, Mathematical Psychics, was matched only
by the difficulty of reading it. He frequently
referenced literary sources and interspersed the
writing with passages in a number of languages,
including as Latin, French and Ancient Greek. 

Alfred Marshall, the most influential economist of
the time, commented in his review of Mathematical
Psychicshttp://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/marsha
ll/marshedgew81.htm:

:This book shows clear signs of genius, and is a
promise of great things to come... His readers may
sometimes wish that he had kept his work by him a
little longer till he had worked it out a little
more fully, and obtained that simplicity which
comes only through long labour. But taking it as
what it claims to be, 'a tentative study', we can
only admire its brilliancy, force, and
originality.

While Jevons noted
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/jevons/jevonse
dgew81.htm:

:Whatever else readers of this book may think
about it, they would probably all agree that it is
a very remarkable one... There can be no doubt
that in the style of his composition Mr. Edgeworth
does not do justice to his matter. His style, if
not obscure, is implicit, so that the reader is
left to puzzle out every important sentence like
an enigma.

He was the editor of the Economic Journal from its
creation in 1891 and was succeeded in this role by
John Maynard Keynes in 1926.

As a self-taught mathematical statistician he is
remembered by the eponymous Edgeworth series. He
wrote the article on Probability in the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica|1911 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. In 1928 Arthur Lyon
Bowley|A. L. Bowley published a book F. Y.
Edgeworth's Contributions to Mathematical
Statistics. 

He was also a barrister, and held the Tooke chair
of Economic Science at King's College, London and
later the Drummond Chair of political
economy|Political Economy at Oxford.

==External links==
* MacTutor Biography|id=Edgeworth
* http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/edgew.htm
New School: Francis Ysidro Edgeworth