Background
LEXIS, Wilhelm was born in 1837 in Eschweiler, Germany.
LEXIS, Wilhelm was born in 1837 in Eschweiler, Germany.
Graduate University Bonn, 1859.
Having studied a wide range of subjects, he turned to the social sciences and brought his statistical expertise to economic questions. He was a strong critic of contemporary mathematical economics as having an inadequate quantitative base. His considerable contributions to population theory and economic time series are probably less well-known than his achievements in the theory of statistics and its application.
In an interesting critique of the second volume of Marx’s Capital in 1885, he correctly predicted the ‘transformation problem’ that emerged in volunteer
3 of Capital (not published until 1894). Engels commented extensively on Lexis’ solution in his preface to Capital, volunteer
3.
Research Chemistry, University Heidelberg, 1859-1861. Professor, Universities Strassburg, 1872, Dorpat, 1874, Freiburg, 1876, Breslau, 1884, Göttingen, 1887.