Hermann Heinrich Gossen facts for kids

Hermann Heinrich Gossen (born September 7, 1810 – died February 13, 1858) was a German economist. He is known for being one of the first to explain the idea of "marginal utility." This is a key concept in economics that helps us understand how people make choices.

Life and Work of a Pioneer Economist

Hermann Gossen studied at the University of Bonn in Germany. After finishing his studies, he worked for the Prussian government. He retired from his government job in 1847. After retiring, he worked selling insurance until he passed away in 1858.

Gossen's Big Idea: Marginal Utility

Gossen wrote a book called Die Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fließenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln (which means "The Development of the Laws of Human Interaction and the Rules for Human Action Derived Therefrom"). In this book, he talked about "marginal utility."

So, what is marginal utility? It's about how much satisfaction or usefulness you get from one more unit of something. For example, if you're really thirsty, the first glass of water is super satisfying. The second one is still good, but maybe a little less satisfying than the first. The tenth glass might not be satisfying at all! This decreasing satisfaction is what Gossen studied.

He also came up with what are now called Gossen's laws. These laws explain how people try to get the most satisfaction from their choices. They show that people will keep buying or using something until the satisfaction from the next unit is less than its cost.

Why Gossen's Work Was Not Popular At First

When Gossen's book came out, it wasn't very popular. At that time, many economists in Germany followed a different way of thinking called the Historical School. They focused more on how history and society shaped the economy.

Gossen's book was also written in a very complex, mathematical way. This made it hard for many people to understand. Gossen himself thought his ideas were as important as those of Copernicus, who discovered that the Earth goes around the Sun. But most people didn't agree back then. Because of this, many copies of his book were destroyed, and only a few original copies exist today.

Rediscovery of Gossen's Ideas

Years later, in the early 1870s, other economists like William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras independently came up with similar ideas about marginal utility. This was a big moment in economics, sometimes called the "Marginal Revolution."

During discussions about who first thought of these ideas, a colleague of Jevons found a copy of Gossen's forgotten book in 1878. This showed that Gossen had actually written about these concepts much earlier. Even though his work was discovered after the others had published their own books, it proved he was a true pioneer in this field.

A century later, in 1983, Gossen's important book was finally translated into English. This made his ideas available to many more people around the world.

See also

In Spanish: Hermann Heinrich Gossen para niños

• Scarcity
• Marginalism