Joseph Shield Nicholson, FBA,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This so ...

(9 November 1850 – 12 May 1927) was an English economist.

Life

He was born in Wrawby in

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershir ...

on 9 November 1850 the only son of Rev Thomas Nicholson, minister of Banbury, and his wife, Mary Anne Grant. He was educated at

Lewisham Lewisham () is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified in the London Plan as one o ...

School in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Nicholson studied Logic and Metaphysics at King's College London and the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

, then studied Moral Philosophy at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, and

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

. He was a private tutor at Cambridge from 1876 to 1880 coming to fame in 1877 when he won the Cambridge Cobden Club prize for his essay "''The Effects of Machinery on Wages''". In 1880 he became

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI i ...

. At this time he lived at 15 Jordan Lane in the Morningside district. He was the first President of the Scottish Society of Economists, serving from its creation in 1897 until 1903. In 1884 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were George Chrystal, Alexander Crum Brown, Alexander Buchan and Peter Guthrie Tait. in 1918, he was awarded the

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded bienni ...

in Silver by the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

. In later life he lived at 3 Belford Park near Dean Village in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

. Nicholson resigned his chair due to ill health in 1925 and died in Edinburgh on 12 May 1927.W. R. Scott, "Nicholson, Joseph Shield (1850–1927)", rev. John Maloney, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004
Retrieved 8 August 2016
/ref> He is buried with his wife, Jane (Jeannie) Walmsley Hodgson, in the 20th-century extension to

Dean Cemetery The Dean Cemetery is a historically important Victorian cemetery north of the Dean Village, west of Edinburgh city centre, in Scotland. It lies between Queensferry Road and the Water of Leith, bounded on its east side by Dean Path and o ...

, Edinburgh, in the central section.

Works

Nicholson's writings represent a compromise between the methods of the historical school of German economics and those of the English deductive school. In his principal work, ''Principles of Political Economy'' (three volumes, 1893–1901), he closely follows John Stuart Mill in his selection of material, but employs

statistical Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industr ...

and historical discussion, instead of the abstract reasoning from simple assumption that characterises Mill's work.

References

External links

* * *
Portraits of Nicholson (National Portrait Gallery, England)John Shield Nicholson - The University of Sydney
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nicholson, Joseph Shield English economists 1850 births 1927 deaths Alumni of King's College London Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh Fellows of the British Academy