William Stanley Jevons
![](/Images/godic/202501/21/Picture_of_jevons0651.jpg")
![Portrait of W. Stanley Jevons at 42, by G. F. Stodart](/Images/godic/202501/21/William_Stanley_Jevons0651.jpg")
![Principles of economics, 1905](/Images/godic/202501/21/lossy-page1-220px-Jevons_-_Principles_of_economics,_1905_-_5157364.tif0651.jpg")
![Portrait of Jevons published in the Popular Science Monthly in 1877](/Images/godic/202501/21/PSM_V11_D660_William_Stanley_Jevons0651.jpg")
William Stanley Jevons FRS (/ˈdʒɛvənz/; 1 September 1835 – 13 August 1882) was an English economist and logician.
Irving Fisher described Jevons' book A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in economics. It made the case that economics as a science concerned with quantities is necessarily mathematical. In so doing, it expounded upon the "final" (marginal) utility theory of value. Jevons' work, along with similar discoveries made by Carl Menger in Vienna (1871) and by Léon Walras in Switzerland (1874), marked the opening of a new period in the history of economic thought. Jevons' contribution to the marginal revolution in economics in the late 19th century established his reputation as a leading political economist and logician of the time.