Jevons, WILLIAM STANLEY, born in Liverpool in 1835, was educated there and at University College, London, and from 1854 to 1859 held a position in the mint at Sydney. In the London M.A. examinations in 1862 he took the gold medal in philosophy; in 1866 he was appointed professor of Logic and Mental Philosophy, and of Political Economy, at Owens College, Manchester; and in 1876-81 he was professor of Political Economy at University College, London. He was elected
F.R.S. in 1872, and received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh in 1876. On 13th August 1882 he was drowned whilst bathing at Bexhill, near Hastings. Jevons was the first to popularise the mathematical methods of Boole (q.v.), and so to bring symbolic logic within the capacity of beginners. Among his works in this field are his Elementary Lessons in Logic (1870), a very popular text-book; The Principles of Science (1874), perhaps his most important work; a collection of useful Studies in Deductive Logic (1880); and Pure Logic, and other Minor Works (1890). To the science of political economy he contributed, besides a primer and several pamphlets, and a work on The Coal Question (1865), which led to the appointment of a Royal Commission, his valuable Theory of Political Economy (1871; 3d ed. 1888), in which the conception of 'final utility' was first distinctly formulated. See his Letters and Journals, edited by his wife (1886).