ABSTRACT
The principal economist to carry out the revolutionary shift was Alfred Marshall, a famed Cambridge professor. His scientific approach debunked the dismal views of Karl Marx and the socialists, and thus helped to regenerate the benefits of Adam Smith's system of natural liberty and economic progress. Marshall was at the forefront of the movement to establish economics as a science, but his story cannot be told without first recounting the tremendous influence of his older British colleague, William Stanley Jevons. Although Marshall was wont to give him credit, Jevons was noted for his mathematical and quantitative studies, and he pioneered the technique of index numbers. With a heavy background in mathematics and chemistry, Jevons applied many of the principles of the natural sciences to the social sciences and economics. Jevons's most important contribution was his mathematical and graphical demonstration of the principle of marginal utility.
