Irving Fisher Utility theory When did he come up with utility theory? James Tobin argued that the intellectual breakthroughs that marked the neoclassical revolution in economics occurred in Europe around 1870. What are the features of this theory? In reviewing the history of utility theory, economist George Stigler wrote that Fisher's doctoral thesis had been "brilliant" Did he get more reviews? " While his published work exhibited an unusual degree of mathematical sophistication for an economist of his day,
Where was he when he came up with the theory?
Where was Irving Fisher when he came up with utility theory?
James Tobin argued that the intellectual breakthroughs that marked the neoclassical revolution in economics occurred in Europe around 1870. The next two decades witnessed lively debates, which led to the new theory being more or less incorporated into the classical tradition that preceded it. In the 1890s, according to Joseph A. Schumpeter there emerged  A large expanse of common ground and ... a feeling of repose, both of which created, in the superficial observer, an impression of finality - the finality of a Greek temple that spreads its perfect lines against a cloudless sky. Of course, Tobin argues, the temple was by no means complete. Its building and decoration continue to this day, even while its faithful throngs worship within. American economists were not present at the creation. To a considerable extent they built their own edifice independently, designing some new architecture in the process. They participated actively in the international controversies and syntheses of the period 1870-1914. At least two Americans were prominent builders of the "temple," John Bates Clark and Irving Fisher. They and others brought neoclassical theory into American journals, classrooms, and textbooks, and its analytical tools into the kits of researchers and practitioners. Eventually, for better or worse, their paradigm would dominate economic science in this country.  In reviewing the history of utility theory, economist George Stigler wrote that Fisher's doctoral thesis had been "brilliant" and stressed that it contained "the first careful examination of the measurability of the utility function and its relevance to demand theory." While his published work exhibited an unusual degree of mathematical sophistication for an economist of his day, Fisher always sought to bring his analysis to life and to present his theories as lucidly as possible. For instance, to complement the arguments in his doctoral thesis, he built an elaborate hydraulic machine with pumps and levers, allowing him to demonstrate visually how the equilibrium prices in the market adjusted in response to changes in supply or demand. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner.  He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the post-Keynesian school.  Joseph Schumpeter described him as "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced", an assessment later repeated by James Tobin and Milton Friedman.

Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium.  He was also a pioneer in the rigorous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates. His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism".  Fisher was also a pioneer of econometrics, including the development of index numbers.  Some concepts named after him include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, the Fisher separation theorem and Fisher market.

Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statement, just nine days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau".  His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression, as well as his advocacy of full-reserve banking and alternative currencies, were largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes.  Fisher's reputation has since recovered in academic economics, particularly after his theoretical models were rediscovered in the late 1960s to the 1970s, a period of increasing reliance on mathematical models within the field. Interest in him has also grown in the public due to an increased interest in debt deflation after the Great Recession.

Fisher was one of the foremost proponents of the full-reserve banking, which he advocated as one of the authors of A Program for Monetary Reform where the general proposal is outlined.

Biography
Fisher was born in Saugerties, New York. His father was a teacher and a Congregational minister, who raised his son to believe he must be a useful member of society. Despite being raised in religious family, he later on became an atheist. As a child, he had remarkable mathematical ability and a flair for invention. A week after he was admitted to Yale College his father died, at age 53. Irving then supported his mother, brother, and himself, mainly by tutoring. He graduated first in his class with a B.A degree in 1888, having also been elected as a member of the Skull and Bones society.

In 1891, Fisher received the first Ph.D. in economics granted by Yale. His faculty advisors were the theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs and the sociologist William Graham Sumner. As a student, Fisher had shown particular talent and inclination for mathematics, but he found that economics offered greater scope for his ambition and social concerns. His thesis, published by Yale in 1892 as Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices, was a rigorous development of the theory of general equilibrium. When he began writing the thesis, Fisher had not been aware that Léon Walras and his continental European disciples had already covered similar ground. Nonetheless, Fisher's work was a very significant contribution and was immediately recognized and praised as first-rate by such European masters as Francis Edgeworth.

After graduating from Yale, Fisher studied in Berlin and Paris. From 1890 onward, he remained at Yale, first as a tutor, then after 1898 as a professor of political economy, and after 1935 as professor emeritus. He edited the Yale Review from 1896 to 1910 and was active in many learned societies, institutes, and welfare organizations. He was president of the American Economic Association in 1918. The American Mathematical Society selected him as its Gibbs Lecturer for 1929. A leading early proponent of econometrics, in 1930 he founded, with Ragnar Frisch and Charles F. Roos the Econometric Society, of which he was the first president.

Fisher was a prolific writer, producing journalism as well as technical books and articles, and addressing various social issues surrounding the First World War, the prosperous 1920s and the depressed 1930s. He made several practical inventions, the most notable of which was an "index visible filing system" which he patented in 1913 and sold to Kardex Rand (later Remington Rand) in 1925. This, and his subsequent stock investments, made him a wealthy man until his personal finances were badly hit by the Crash of 1929.

Fisher was also an active social and health campaigner, as well as an advocate of vegetarianism, prohibition, and eugenics.  In 1893, he married Margaret Hazard, a granddaughter of Rhode Island industrialist and social reformer Rowland G. Hazard. He died of inoperable colon cancer in New York City in 1947, at the age of 80.

Economic theories

Utility theory 
James Tobin, writing on the contributions of John Bates Clark and Irving Fisher to neoclassical theory in America  argues that American economists contributed in their own way to the preparation of a common ground after the neoclassical revolution. In particular Clark and Irving Fisher “brought neoclassical theory into American journals, classrooms, and textbooks, and its analytical tools into the kits of researchers and practitioners.” Already in his doctoral thesis, “Fisher expounds thoroughly the mathematics of utility functions and their maximization, and he is careful to allow for corner solutions.” Already then, Fisher “states clearly that neither interpersonally comparable utility nor cardinal utility for each individual is necessary to the determination of equilibrium."

In reviewing the history of utility theory, economist George Stigler wrote that Fisher's doctoral thesis had been "brilliant" and stressed that it contained "the first careful examination of the measurability of the utility function and its relevance to demand theory."  While his published work exhibited an unusual degree of mathematical sophistication for an economist of his day, Fisher always sought to bring his analysis to life and to present his theories as lucidly as possible.  For instance, to complement the arguments in his doctoral thesis, he built an elaborate hydraulic machine with pumps and levers, allowing him to demonstrate visually how the equilibrium prices in the market adjusted in response to changes in supply or demand.

Interest and capital

Fisher is probably best remembered today in neoclassical economics for his theory of capital, investment, and interest rates, first exposited in his The Nature of Capital and Income (1906) and elaborated on in The Rate of Interest (1907). His 1930 treatise, The Theory of Interest, summed up a lifetime's research into capital, capital budgeting, credit markets, and the factors (including inflation) that determine interest rates.

Fisher saw that subjective economic value is not only a function of the amount of goods and services owned or exchanged, but also of the moment in time when they are purchased with money. A good available now has a different value than the same good available at a later date; value has a time as well as a quantity dimension. The relative price of goods available at a future date, in terms of goods sacrificed now, is measured by the interest rate. Fisher made free use of the standard diagrams used to teach undergraduate economics, but labeled the axes "consumption now" and "consumption next period" (instead of the usual schematic alternatives of "apples" and "oranges"). The resulting theory, one of considerable power and insight, was presented in detail in The Theory of Interest.

This model, later generalized to the case of K goods and N periods (including the case of infinitely many periods) has become a standard theory of capital and interest, and is described in Gravelle and Rees, and Aliprantis, Brown, and Burkinshaw. This theoretical advance is explained in Hirshleifer.

Fisher saw that the economic policy of what he did for his theory for was something that was making an impact on society as a whole. He was seen as the “greatest American economist of his time”, taking the skills of what he learned in mathematics and decided to incorporate it into economics for the greater good of the field of study. Once he brought out his Quantity Theory of Money, it started to take economic models and bring more of a life to them in the aspects of the mathematics included with it. With addressing models have the different axes labeled, there has been so much that he has contributed to the economic world. One of the strongest points that Fisher brings out in discussing interest rates was the power of impatience and time. When examining how a certain item can be valued during a point of time, then seeing how much it is in a different time, justified by interest, speaks out volumes of what is happening in the world. The impatience of humans with their nature of not wanting to wait for certain items speaks out to what is going in, with relations to interest rates. When an individual begins to wait, there is much that happens in relations with the interest rates. Overall, it becomes more of a monetary value that humans end up going for with not waiting for purchase something in the different period instead of the current. At the end, Fisher has left a huge impact the world on economics.

Monetary economics
Fisher's research into the basic theory of prices and interest rates did not touch directly on the great social issues of the day. On the other hand, his monetary economics did and this grew to be the main focus of Fisher's mature work.

It was Fisher who (following the pioneering work of Simon Newcomb) formulated the quantity theory of money in terms of the "equation of exchange:" Let M be the total stock of money, P the price level, T the amount of transactions carried out using money, and V the velocity of circulation of money, so that

Later economists replaced T by the real output Y (or Q), usually quantified by the real Gross domestic product (GDP).

Fisher's Appreciation and Interest was an abstract analysis of the behavior of interest rates when the price level is changing. It emphasized the distinction between real and nominal interest rates:

where  is the real interest rate,  is the nominal interest rate, and the inflation  is a measure of the increase in the price level. When inflation is sufficiently low, the real interest rate can be approximated as the nominal interest rate minus the expected inflation rate. The resulting equation is known as the Fisher equation in his honor.

Fisher believed that investors and savers – people in general – were afflicted in varying degrees by "money illusion"; they could not see past the money to the goods the money could buy. In an ideal world, changes in the price level would have no effect on production or employment. In the actual world with money illusion, inflation (and deflation) did serious harm. For more than forty years, Fisher elaborated his vision of the damaging "dance of the dollar" and devised various schemes to "stabilize" money, i.e. to stabilize the price level. He was one of the first to subject macroeconomic data, including the money stock, interest rates, and the price level, to statistical analyses and tests. In the 1920s, he introduced the technique later called distributed lags. In 1973, the Journal of Political Economy posthumously reprinted his 1926 paper on the statistical relation between unemployment and inflation, retitling it as "I discovered the Phillips curve". Index numbers played an important role in his monetary theory, and his book The Making of Index Numbers has remained influential down to the present day.

Fisher's main intellectual rival was the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. Fisher espoused a more succinct explanation of the quantity theory of money, resting it almost exclusively on long run prices. Wicksell's theory was considerably more complicated, beginning with interest rates in a system of changes in the real economy. Although both economists concluded from their theories that at the heart of the business cycle (and economic crisis) was government monetary policy, their disagreement would not be solved in their lifetimes, and indeed, it was inherited by the policy debates between the Keynesians and monetarists beginning a half-century later.

Debt-deflation

Following the stock market crash of 1929, and in light of the ensuing Great Depression, Fisher developed a theory of economic crises called debt-deflation, which attributed the crises to the bursting of a credit bubble. Initially, during the upswing over-confident economic agents are lured by the prospect of high profits to increase their debt in order to leverage their gains. According to Fisher, once the credit bubble bursts, this unleashes a series of effects that have serious negative impact on the real economy:
 Debt liquidation and distress selling.
 Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off.
 A fall in the level of asset prices.
 A still greater fall in the net worth of businesses, precipitating bankruptcies.
 A fall in profits.
 A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
 Pessimism and loss of confidence.
 Hoarding of money.
 A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation-adjusted interest rates.

Crucially, as debtors try to liquidate or pay off their nominal debt, the fall of prices caused by this defeats the very attempt to reduce the real burden of debt. Thus, while repayment reduces the amount of money owed, this does not happen fast enough since the real value of the dollar now rises ('swelling of the dollar').

This theory was largely ignored in favor of Keynesian economics, in part because of the damage to Fisher's reputation caused by his public optimism about the stock market, just prior to the crash. Debt-deflation has experienced a revival of mainstream interest since the 1980s, and particularly with the Late-2000s recession. Steve Keen predicted the 2008 recession by using Hyman Minsky's further development of Fisher's work on debt-deflation. Debt-deflation is now the major theory with which Fisher's name is associated.

Stock market crash of 1929
The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression cost Fisher much of his personal wealth and academic reputation. He famously predicted, nine days before the crash, that stock prices had "reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." Irving Fisher stated on October 21 that the market was "only shaking out of the lunatic fringe" and went on to explain why he felt the prices still had not caught up with their real value and should go much higher. On Wednesday, October 23, he announced in a banker's meeting "security values in most instances were not inflated." For months after the Crash, he continued to assure investors that a recovery was just around the corner. Once the Great Depression was in full force, he did warn that the ongoing drastic deflation was the cause of the disastrous cascading insolvencies then plaguing the American economy because deflation increased the real value of debts fixed in dollar terms. Fisher was so discredited by his 1929 pronouncements and by the failure of a firm he had started that few people took notice of his "debt-deflation" analysis of the Depression. People instead eagerly turned to the ideas of Keynes. Fisher's debt-deflation scenario has since seen a revival since the 1980s.

Constructive Income Taxation
Lawrence Lokken, the University of Miami School of Law professor of economics, credits

Fisher's 1942 book with the concept behind the Unlimited Savings Accumulation Tax, a reform introduced in the United States Senate in 1995 by Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico), former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska). The concept was that unnecessary spending (which is hard to define in a law) can be taxed by taxing income minus all net investments and savings, and minus an allowance for essential purchases, thus making funds available for investment.

Social and health campaigns 
In 1898, Fisher was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had killed his father.  He spent three years in sanatoria, finally making a full recovery.  That experience sparked in him a vocation as a health campaigner.  He was one of the founders of the Life Extension Institute, under whose auspices he co-authored the bestselling book How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, published in 1915.  He advocated regular exercise and the avoidance of red meat, tobacco, and alcohol.  In 1924, Fisher wrote an anti-smoking article for the Reader's Digest, which argued that "tobacco lowers the whole tone of the body and decreases its vital power and resistance ... [it] acts like a narcotic poison, like opium and like alcohol, though usually in a less degree".

Fisher supported the legal prohibition of alcohol and wrote three booklets defending prohibition in the United States on grounds of public health and economic productivity.  As a proponent of Eugenics he helped found the Race Betterment Foundation in 1906.  He also defended eugenics, serving in the scientific advisory board of the Eugenics Record Office and as first president of the American Eugenics Society.

When his daughter Margaret was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Fisher had her treated at the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton, whose director was the psychiatrist Henry Cotton.  Cotton believed in a "focal sepsis" theory, according to which mental illness resulted from infectious material in the roots of teeth, bowel recesses, and other places in the body.  Cotton also claimed that surgical removal of the infected tissue could alleviate the patient's mental disorder.  At Trenton, Margaret Fisher had sections of her bowel and colon removed, which eventually resulted in her death.  Irving Fisher nonetheless remained convinced of the validity of Cotton's treatment.

Selected publications
Fisher, Irving Norton, 1961. A Bibliography of the Writings of Irving Fisher (1961). Compiled by Fisher's son; contains 2425 entries.
 Primary
 1892. Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices. Scroll to chapter links.
 1896. Appreciation and Interest. Link.
 1906. The Nature of Capital and Income. Scroll to chapter links.
 1907. The Rate of Interest. Extracts from Preface and Appendix to ch. VII.
 1910, 1914. Introduction to Economic Science. Section  links.
 1911a, 1922, 2nd ed. The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit, Interest, and Crises. Scroll to chapter links from Library of Economics and Liberty (LE&L). Full text of 1920 edition online via FRASER
 1911b, 1913. Elementary Principles of Economics. Scroll to chapter links.
 1915. How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science (with Eugene Lyon Fisk). Link.
 1918, "Is 'Utility' the Most Suitable Term for the Concept It is Used to Denote?" American Economic Review, pp. 335–37]. Reprint.
 1921a.  "Dollar Stabilization," Encyclopædia Britannica 12th ed.. XXX, pp. 852–853. Reprint page links from LE&L.
 1921b, The Best Form of Index Number, American Statistical Association Quarterly. 17(133), pp. pp. 533–537.
 1922. The Making of Index Numbers: A Study of Their Varieties, Tests, and Reliability. Scroll to chapter links,
 1923, "The Business Cycle Largely a 'Dance of the Dollar'," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 18, pp. 1024–28. Link.
 1926, "A Statistical Relation between Unemployment and Price Changes," International Labour Review, 13(6), p pp. 785–92. Reprinted as 1973, "I Discovered the Phillips Curve: A Statistical Relation between Unemployment and Price Changes'," Journal of Political Economy, 81(2, Part 1), p pp. 496–502.
 1927, "A Statistical Method for Measuring 'Marginal Utility' and Testing the Justice of a Progressive Income Tax" in Economic Essays Contributed in Honor of John Bates Clark .
 1928, The Money Illusion, New York: Adelphi Company. Scroll to chapter-preview links.
 1930a. The Stock Market Crash and After.
 1930b. The Theory of Interest. Chapter I. Chapter links, each numbered by paragraph via LE&L.
 1932. Booms and Depressions: Some First Principles. full text online via FRASER.
 
 1933b. Stamp Scrip. full text online
 1935. 100% Money. full text online
 1942. "Constructive Income Taxation: A Proposal for Reform." New York: Harper & Brothers.
 1996. The Works of Irving Fisher. edited by William J. Barber et al. 14 volumes London : Pickering & Chatto.

See also 

 Chicago plan
 Eugenics in the United States
 Ham and Eggs Movement, California pension reform plan, 1938–40
 Library of Economics and Liberty
 Marginalism
 Milton Friedman
 2018 Swiss sovereign-money initiative

References

Further reading
 Allen, Robert Loring (1993). Irving Fisher: A Biography
Dimand, Robert W. (2020). "J. Laurence Laughlin versus Irving Fisher on the quantity theory of money, 1894 to 1913." Oxford Economic Papers 
 Dimand, Robert W. (2003). "Irving Fisher on the International Transmission of Booms and Depressions through Monetary Standards." Journal of Money, Credit & Banking. Vol: 35#1 pp 49+. online edition
 Dimand, Robert W. (1993). "The Dance of the Dollar: Irving Fisher's Monetary Theory of Economic Fluctuations," History of Economics Review  20:161–172.
 Dimand, Robert W. (1994). "Irving Fisher's Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions," Review of Social Economy  52:92–107
 
 Dimand, Robert W., and Geanakoplos, John (2005). "Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist" American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Jan 2005, Vol. 64 Issue 1, pp. 3–18
  (1958). The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 3.
 Fellner, William, ed. (1967). Ten Economic Studies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher
 Fisher, Irving Norton (1956). My Father Irving Fisher.
 
 Schumpeter, Joseph (1951). Ten Great Economists: 222–38.
 Schumpeter, Joseph (1954). A History of Economic Analysis (1954)
 Thaler, Richard (1999). "Irving Fisher: Behavioral Economist," American Economic Review.
 Tobin, James (1987). "Fisher, Irving,"  The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, Vol. 2: 369–76. Reprinted in American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Jan, 2005, 17 pages.
 Tobin, James (1985). "Neoclassical Theory in America: J. B. Clark and Fisher" American Economic Review (Dec 1985) vol 75#6  pp. 28–38 in JSTOR

External links

 Archive for the History of Economic Thought at McMaster University
 New School for Social Research website:
 Irving Fisher, 1867–1947. Includes a photograph of the young Fisher. For a photograph of the older man, see Irving Fisher on the Portraits of Statisticians page.
 Irving Fisher's Theory of Investment.
 Irving Fisher Papers (MS 212). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
 Herbert Scarf, William C.Brainard, "How to Compute Equilibrium Prices in 1891". Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper 1272, August 2000 – for the description of Fisher's hydraulic apparatus.
 
 
 
 Works by or about Irving Fisher on FRASER
 

American atheists
Economists from New York (state)
American statisticians
Neoclassical economists
1867 births
1947 deaths
American temperance activists
Activists from New York (state)
Tobacco researchers
American eugenicists
Presidents of the American Economic Association
Presidents of the American Statistical Association
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Presidents of the Econometric Society
Yale University alumni
People from Saugerties, New York
19th-century economists
20th-century American economists
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Jørg Tofte Jebsen  (27 April 1888 – 7 January 1922) was a physicist from Norway, where he was the first to work on Einstein's general theory of relativity. In this connection he became known after his early death for what many now call the Jebsen-Birkhoff theorem for the metric tensor outside a general, spherical mass distribution.

Biography

Jebsen was born and grew up in Berger, Vestfold, where his father Jens Johannes Jebsen ran two large textile mills. His mother was Agnes Marie Tofte and they had married in 1884. After elementary school he went through middle school and gymnasium in Oslo. He showed already then particular talents for mathematical topics.

After the final examen artium in 1906, he did not continue his academic studies at a university as would be normal at that time. He was meant to enter his father's company and spent for that purpose two years in Aachen in Germany where he studied textile manufacturing. After a shorter stay in England, he came back to Norway and started to work with his father.

But his interests for natural science took over so that in 1909 he started this field of study at University of Oslo. His work there was interrupted in the period 1911-12 when he was an assistant for Sem Sæland at the newly established Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in Trondheim. Back in Oslo he took up investigations of X-ray crystallography with Lars Vegard. With his help he could pursue this work at University of Berlin starting in the spring of 1914. That was at the same time as Einstein took up his new position there.

Theory of relativity
During the stay in Berlin it became clear that his main interests were in theoretical physics and electrodynamics in particular. This is central to Einstein's special theory of relativity and would define his future work back in Norway. From 1916 he took a new job as assistant in Trondheim, but had to resign after a year because of health problems. In the summer of 1917 he married Magnhild Andresen in Oslo and they had a child a year later. They had then moved back to his parents home in Berger where he worked alone on a larger treatise with the title Versuch einer elektrodynamischen Systematik. It was finished a year later in 1918 and he hoped that it could be used to obtain a doctors degree at the university. In the fall the same year he received treatment at a sanatorium for what turned out to be tuberculosis.

The faculty at the University in Oslo sent Jebsen's thesis for evaluation to Carl Wilhelm Oseen at the University of Uppsala. He had some critical comments with the result that it was approved for the more ordinary cand.real. degree. But Oseen had found this student so promising that he shortly thereafter was invited to work with him. Jebsen came to Uppsala in the fall of 1919 where he could follow lectures by Oseen on general relativity.

Jebsen-Birkhoff theorem
At that time it was natural to study the exact solution of Einstein’s equations for the metric outside a static, spherical mass distribution found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916. 
Jebsen set out to extend this achievement to the more general case for a spherical mass distribution that varied with time. This would be of relevance for pulsating stars. After a relative short time he came to the surprising result that the static Schwarzschild solution still gives the exact metric tensor outside the mass distribution. It means that such a spherical, pulsating star will not emit gravitational waves.

During the spring 1920 he hoped to get the results published through the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This was met by some difficulties, but after the intervention by Oseen it was accepted for publication in a Swedish journal for the natural sciences where it appeared the following year.

His work did not seem to generate much interest. One reason can be that the Swedish journal was not so well-known abroad. A couple of years later it was rediscovered by  George David Birkhoff who included it in a popular science book he wrote. Thus it became known as "Birkhoff's theorem." The original discovery of Jebsen was pointed out first in 2005, and translated into English. From that time on it is now more often called the Jebsen-Birkhoff theorem. Most modern-day proofs are along the lines of the original Jebsen derivation.

Final years
Einstein came on a visit to Oslo in June 1920. He would give three public lectures about the theory of relativity after the invitation by the Student Society. Jebsen was also there, but it is not clear if he met him personally.

In the fall the same year Jebsen traveled with his family to Bolzano in northern Italy in order to find a milder climate to improve his deteriorating health. Here he wrote the first Norwegian presentation of the differential geometry used in general relativity. He also found time to write a popular book on Galileo Galilei and his struggle with the church. But his health did not improve and he died there on January 7, 1922. A few weeks later he was buried near his home in Norway.

Referanser

Norwegian physicists
Relativity theorists
1888 births
1922 deaths
People from Vestfold Resistance theory is an aspect of political thought, discussing the basis on which constituted authority may be resisted, by individuals or groups. In the European context it came to prominence as a consequence of the religious divisions in the early modern period that followed the Protestant Reformation. Resistance theories could justify disobedience on religious grounds to monarchs, and were significant in European national politics and international relations in the century leading up to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. They can also underpin and justify the concept of revolution as now understood. The resistance theory of the early modern period can be considered to predate the formulations of natural and legal rights of citizens, and to co-exist with considerations of natural law.

Any "right to resist" is a theory about the limitations on civil obedience. Resistance theory is an aspect of political theory; the right of self-defence is usually taken to be a part of legal theory, and was no novelty in the early modern period. Arguments about the two concepts do overlap, and the distinction is not so clear in debates.

The language of magistracy
Resistance theory has been formulated as "resistance to the magistrate", where magistrate stands for authority in the legal form. In effect "magistrate" here may stand for head of state, but the modern concept of state grew up alongside the early modern resistance theories, rather than preceding them. Reference was made, for example by Althusius to classical history: to the ephors of the Spartan Constitution, as "lesser magistrates", or to the optimates of the late Roman Republic.

Christian resistance theories of the early modern period
The various strands did not develop separately, and drew on pre-Reformation thinkers as well as contemporaries.

Lutheran resistance theory

It is argued that the beginnings of Protestant resistance theory lay in the legal positions worked out after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg, by jurists working for the Electorate of Saxony and the Landgraviate of Hesse. A summary on Lutheran ideas about resistance was included with the 1550 Magdeburg Confession. It argues that the "subordinate powers" in a state, faced with the situation where the "supreme power" is working to destroy true religion, under very specific circumstances (such as when the Beerwolf clause is fulfilled) may go further than non-cooperation with the supreme power and assist the faithful to resist.

Calvinist resistance theory

The mainstream ideas from the Magdeburg Confession recur in Calvinist writings, from 1558 onwards. A little before that development come statements of John Ponet, Christopher Goodman and John Knox (The Monstruous Regiment of Women). The annotations of the Geneva Bible pointed to exemplars of resistance theory (and were not unique in that).

The literature includes but is not limited to the Huguenot resistance theory of the French Wars of Religion. Theodore Beza produced the 1574 work Right of Magistrates; it was followed by the anonymous Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579). Resistance theory also became important for the justification of the Dutch Revolt. In the Politica (1603) of Johannes Althusius, one of the occasions justifying resistance to a supreme magistrate by inferior magistrates (roughly, members of the "ruling class"), in the case of tyranny, is for a prince or group of rulers of provinces, extended to the provincial "authorities", this matching the situation of the Revolt. Althusius was closer to Zwingli than Calvin in his approach, in fact, and clarified his views on church and state in successive editions.

Hugo Grotius, expelled from the Dutch Reformed Church because of his Remonstrant views, altered the question of resistance theory in two ways. In De jure belli ac pacis he argued against the distinction from the right of self-defence and accountable government. But he also modified the question, influentially, to include the removal of private warfare from political society (an issue of pacification).

Catholic resistance theory
In the French context, Catholic resistance theory grew on the ultramontanism of the time, and developed through controversy and political alignment. This situation came about because the opposite "cismontane" tendency, Gallicanism, came to be allied with the politiques, and the royalist view tending to divine right. Therefore, the opponents of the monarchs Henry III and Henry IV in France, in the Catholic League, came to reason in favour of the limitations on royal power that their opponents denied. The position after the Council of Trent left the Jesuits opposed to the "liberties" claimed by the Gallican Church, and defenders of ultramontanism. The tradition of the papal deposing power was defended, in indirect form, by Robert Bellarmine in 1586, which amounted to validating some resistance by subjects; in reply Louis Servin in 1591 wrote a vindication in extreme form of Gallican liberties.

Resistance theory and the Church of England
The Church of England after the Elizabethan Settlement was a church open to Calvinist ideas, rather than a Calvinist church: Reformed theology was accepted on a piecemeal basis. The 1568 Bishops' Bible contained annotations with political content similar to those in the Geneva Bible. Thomas Bilson published in 1585 The True Difference betweene Christian Subiection and Unchristian Rebellion, in the context of the Treaty of Nonsuch between England and the United Provinces. It was reprinted in 1643, at the outbreak of the First English Civil War. Bilson argued against religion alone as a basis for resistance, so discounting the resistance theories of Christopher Goodman, John Knox and Huldrich Zwingli as politically based.

In The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), James VI of Scotland set out his views on the relationship of king and subjects, against the current contractarian theories and especially the resistance theory of George Buchanan, who had been his tutor. Besides theoretical reasons for denying what Buchanan had written in De juri regni apud Scotos (1579), and dedicated to James, he felt that Buchanan had used Scottish history to support his claims only by misprision; and those views led to disorder. These opinions he did not vary on becoming king in England five years later; as for religious strife he was a conciliarist of an older tradition, in harmony with the views of Richard Hooker. Hooker's actual views on resistance theory were careful; he criticised aspects of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, but avoided commenting in particular on legitimate resistance. Churchmen who would later be seen as poles apart on theology, Thomas Morton and David Owen, wrote in the period 1605–10 on resistance theory in a way equating it with a Catholic tradition; Owen commented that the analogy general council is to papacy as peers to monarchy is false.

By the time of the reign of Charles I, other considerations had come to matter more. Arminianism in the Church of England had become a source of great tension. But in theological terms Arminianism was compatible with divine right, as it was with resistance theory. The argument on resistance was going on elsewhere.

Resistance theory and the English Civil war
A context for resistance theory in England was in the theoretical discussions of common law about how to incorporate monarchy into the "ancient constitution". Political conflicts that were stoked up by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War took place in the 1620s with a shared consensus assumption against the legitimacy of resistance. It has been argued that the theorising from the late sixteenth century on the English ancient constitution was an "antidote" to resistance theory.

Conrad Russell's biography of John Pym in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography comments that, while Pym almost certainly was familiar with resistance theory in its Protestant form, around the time in early 1642 when the First English Civil War was breaking out, he was too good a politician to show that he knew it. Russell has also argued that the Parliamentarians were almost completely successful in avoiding formulating a resistance theory.

Whig resistance theory
The Whig faction was founded at the time of the Exclusion Crisis around 1680 in British politics, and its initial purpose was to resist the legitimate succession to the throne of James, Duke of York. "Whig resistance theory" had numerous strands, in particular when compared with the opposing legitimists (Jacobites) and the other major political faction, the Tories who advocated passive obedience as dissent, and as a definite limitation on resistance theories supported only passive resistance, indeed preferring nonresistance. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, written at the time of the Exclusion Crisis but published after the Glorious Revolution, went back to the Calvinist resistance theory as in George Buchanan. Algernon Sidney like Locke replied to the Patriarcha of Robert Filmer, and provided a thorough animadversion.

The trial in 1710 of Henry Sacheverell, a High Church and High Tory cleric, brought Whig resistance theories into prominence and focus, by generating a controversial literature. These developments broke apart any semblance of unity in Anglican resistance theory. Constantine Phipps defended Sacheverell, and Benjamin Hoadley who was an extreme Whig in his The Original and Institution of Civil Government Discuss'd (1710), made opposite and incompatible claims about the treatment of resistance in Richard Hooker, who by now was an iconic figure in Anglican theology.

See also
Tyrant
Tyrannicide
Popular sovereignty

References

Early Modern politics
Political theories
Control (social and political)
Revolution