Friedrich Benedikt Wilhelm von Hermann (5 December 1795 – 23 November 1868) was a German economist and statistician. Biography Friedrich von Hermann was born on 5 December 1795, at Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria. After finishing his primary education he was for some time employed in a draughtsman's office. He then resumed his studies, partly at the gymnasium in his native town, partly at the universities of Erlangen and Würzburg. In 1817 he began working for a private school at Nuremberg, where he remained for four years. After filling an appointment as teacher of mathematics at the gymnasium of Erlangen, he became in 1823 Privatdozent at the university in that town. His inaugural dissertation was on the notions of political economy among the Romans (Dissertatio exhibens sententias Romanorum ad oeconomiam politicam pertinentes, Erlangen, 1823). He afterwards acted as professor of mathematics at the gymnasium and polytechnic school in Nuremberg, where he continued till 1827. During his stay there he published an elementary treatise on arithmetic and algebra (Lehrbuch der Arith. u. Algeb., 1826), and made a journey to France to inspect the organization and conduct of technical schools in that country. The results of his investigation were published in 1826 and 1828 (Über technische Unterrichts-Anstalten). Soon after his return from France, he was made professor extraordinarius of political science of the university of Munich, and in 1833 he was advanced to the rank of ordinary professor. In 1832 appeared the first edition of his great work on political economy, Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen (“Investigations in Political Economy”). In 1835 he was made member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. From the year 1836 he acted as inspector of technical instruction in Bavaria, and made frequent journeys to Berlin and Paris in order to study the methods there pursued. In the state service of Bavaria, to which he devoted himself, he rose rapidly. In 1837 he was placed on the council for superintendence of church and school work; in 1839 he was entrusted with the direction of the bureau of statistics; in 1845 he was one of the councillors for the interior. In 1848 he sat as member for Munich in the national assembly at Frankfort. In this assembly Hermann, with Johann Heckscher and others, was mainly instrumental in organizing the so-called "Great German" party, and was selected as one of the representatives of their views at Vienna. Warmly supporting the customs union (Zollverein),