Samuel Mountifort Longfield (1802 – 21 November 1884) was an Irish lawyer, judge, mathematician, and academic.
[1] He was son of Mountifort Longfield, vicar of Desert Serges (Desert Magee), County Cork, and his wife Grace, daughter of William Lysaght of Fort William and Mount North, County Cork.
He was educated at Trinity College Dublin, graduated as moderator and gold medallist in science in 1823, became a fellow in 1825, and proceeded to the degrees of M.A.
[2] A liberal in politics, Longfield helped draft the Irish measures of the first and second Gladstone administrations.
It was unusual for its time and was only rediscovered after 1900; some of his ideas on capital and interest foreshadowed the work of the Austrian School.