Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob

Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (26 February 1759 – 22 July 1827) was a German philosopher, political scientist and economist.

During the French occupation of Germany, he worked as a consultant and professor in Russia.

He was very popular as a lecturer on metaphysics, but after 1800 turned his attention especially to political economy.

In 1810, he became president of the commission for the revision of criminal law, and at the same time he obtained an important office in the finance department, with the rank of counsellor of state.

Shortly after his first appointment to a professorship in Halle, Jakob had begun to turn his attention rather to the practical than the speculative side of philosophy, and in 1805 he published at Halle Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, in which he was the first to advocate in Germany the necessity of a distinct science dealing specially with the subject of national wealth.