Leon Walras (1834–1910)
Leon Walras was born in France, the son of an economist. After
being trained inauspiciously in engineering and performing
poorly in mathematics, Walras spent some time pursuing other
endeavours, such as novel writing and working for the railway.
Eventually he promised his father he would study economics,
and by 1870 he was given a professorship in economics in the
Faculty of Law at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Once there, Walras began the feverish activity that eventually
led to his important contributions to economic theory.
In the 1870s, Walras was one of three economists to put
forward the marginal utility theory of value (simultaneously with
William Stanley Jevons of England and Carl Menger of Austria).
Further, he constructed a mathematical model of general
equilibrium using a system of simultaneous equations that he
used to argue that equilibrium prices and quantities are
uniquely determined. Central to general equilibrium analysis is
the notion that the prices and quantities of all commodities are
determined simultaneously because the whole system is
interdependent. Walras’s most important work was Elements of