Von Thünen’s book won him considerable recognition during his lifetime. According to Schumacher (1868), Rodbertus credited von Thünen with bringing to economics the rare combination of a most exact method and a humane heart, and the British Parliament used von Thünen’s calculations of the grain production of the European continent in its deliberations on the corn laws. But the voluminous proportions of the work, its seemingly formidable mathematics, and its unusual originality appear to have prevented it from being either widely read or understood until the rediscovery of marginal analysis and the introduction of mathematical formulation into the mainstream of economic theory more than twenty years after von thünen’s death. Alfred Marshall acknowledged a major debt to von Thünen.