Jacob Waley, 1818-1873.

English jurist and economist. 

Educated at University College London under Augustus de Morgan, graduating in 1839 with a degree in both mathematics and classics, and the first UCL student to earn an M.A. Waley was subsequently admitted to Lincoln's Inn and, in 1842, became only the third Jew to be called to the bar. Waley built up a reputation as a renowned conveyancer and a prominent and active figure in the London Jewish community, becoming the first president of the Anglo-Jewish Association.

In 1854, Jacob Waley was appointed Professor of Political Economy at University College London, and was singularly responsible for reviving the chair, which had been in abeyance at that institution since J.R. McCulloch left in 1835.

Waley's most cited contribution was a paper read before the Political Economy Club in late 1866 (subsequently published in JRSS), investigating whether strikes and labor activity actually do have an effect on wages (Waley concluded they did.).

Given how little he wrote, Waley's own positions on economics are obscure.  One of the students he examined in1860 -- William Stanley Jevons -- estimated Waley's predilections to be decidedly in the school of Mill, although that might be based more on Jevons's resentment for having achieved a Third in the UCL examination by Waley.  The examinations set by Waley seem to indicate an inclination towards Senior (until recently, an external examiner an UCL)

In 1865-66, Waley retired, but not without commenting on the controversy then swirling around the appointment to the philosophy chair at UCL.  Waley organized a petition in support of Augustus de Morgan and deploring the conduct of the administration.

Waley remained joint secretary of the Political Economy Club until his death. 

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