Mountifort Longfield

Samuel Mountifort Longfield (1802 – 21 November 1884) was an Irish lawyer, judge, mathematician, and academic. He was the first Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin.

Life 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. in 1829 and LL.D. in 1831.

In 1828 Longfield was called to the Irish bar, but did not practise. When the professorship of political economy in Trinity College was founded in 1832, he was appointed the first professor; and in 1834 he resigned his fellowship and became Regius Professor of Feudal and English Law there, a post he held for the rest of his life, from 1871 having as deputy N. Ritchie, Q.C.

His main approaches revolved around the labor theory of value, an analysis of capital and distribution theory (based on a concept of marginal productivity). He applies insofar as the representative of the marginal utility theory avant la lettre.

Works Four Lectures on Poor Laws, 1834.

Three Lectures on Commerce and One on Absenteeism, 1835 An Elementary Treatise on Series, published by Hodges, Foster & Figgis, Dublin, 1872

Family In 1845 Longfield married Elizabeth Penelope, daughter of Andrew Armstrong.