Background
William Stanley Jevons
(1 September 1835 – 13 August 1882)
William Stanley Jevons - a British economist and logician - was born in Liverpool on 1 September 1835. His father Thomas Jevons (1791–1855) was an iron merchant; his mother Mary Anne Roscoe (1795–1845) grew up in an intellectual and artistic milieu. The railway boom crisis of 1847 caused the bankruptcy of the family firm. William Stanley Jevons went to University College School in London in 1850 at the age of 15, and in 1851 to University College. Towards the end of 1853, after having spent two years at University College, where his favorite subjects were chemistry and botany, he unexpectedly received the offer of the assayer ship to the new mint in Australia. The idea of leaving the UK was distasteful, but pecuniary considerations had, in consequence of the failure of his father's firm in 1847, become of vital importance, and he accepted the post. Jevons left University College without taking his degree and left the UK for Sydney in June 1854, remained there for five years (1854-1859). Jevons devoted there much time to private study. His work covered many different areas: railway policy, meteorology, protection, land policy, cloud formation, gunpowder and lightning, geology, etc. Jevons left Australia in 1859 and returned to University College to complete his education. Jevons received his MA degree in 1862, and was awarded the gold medal ‘in the third branch’ which included logic, moral philosophy, political philosophy, history of philosophy and political economy. In 1863 Jevons became a tutor at Owens College, Manchester, and in 1866 a lecturer in political economy and logic. Jevons suffered a good deal from ill health and sleeplessness, and found the delivery of lectures covering so wide a range of subjects very burdensome. In 1876 he was glad to exchange the Owens professorship for the professorship of political economy in University College, London. Travelling and music were the principal recreations of his life; but his health continued to be bad, and he suffered from depression. He found his professorial duties increasingly irksome, and feeling that the pressure of literary work left him no spare energy, he decided in 1880 to resign the post. On 13 August 1882 he was drowned whilst bathing near Hastings.