The English economist Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) was the founder of the "new economics." He rejected the traditional definition of economics as the "science of wealth" to establish a discipline concerned with social welfare.

Alfred Marshall was born in London on July 26, 1842, the son of a cashier at the Bank of England. At Cambridge he abandoned plans to enter the Anglican clergy and graduated in mathematics. Elected to a Cambridge fellowship, Marshall planned then to pursue molecular physics. Instead, he was drawn first to metaphysics, particularly ethics, which he studied in Germany for a year, then to psychology, and finally to economics as a practical means for implementing ethics.

In 1868 Marshall's college, St. John's, established a special lectureship for him in moral science. In 1875 he returned from a study of trade protection in the United States to attempt to make political economy a serious subject at Cambridge. When, in...