Alfred Weber (; 30 July 1868 – 2 May 1958) was a German economist, geographer, sociologist and theoretician of culture whose work was influential in the development of modern economic geography. Life Alfred Weber, younger brother of the well-known sociologist Max Weber, was born in Erfurt and raised in Charlottenburg. From 1907 to 1933, he was a professor at the University of Heidelberg. Weber started his carrier as a lawyer and worked as a sociologist and cultural philosopher. Work Weber supported reintroducing theory and causal models to the field of economics, in addition to using historical analysis. In this field, his achievements involve work on early models of industrial location. He lived during the period when sociology became a separate field of science. Though his theory on 'Industrial Location' was strictly economic during his time it is widely studied in the field of geography now, mostly as a theoretical concept in the subdomain of economic geography. Weber maintained a commitment to the "philosophy of history" traditions. He contributed theories for analyzing social change in Western civilization as a confluence of civilization (intellectual and technological), social processes (organizations) and culture (art, religion, and philosophy). Least cost theory Leaning heavily on work developed by the relatively unknown Wilhelm Launhardt, Alfred Weber formulated a least cost theory of industrial location which tries to explain and predict the locational pattern of industry at a macro scale. It emphasizes that firms seek a site with minimum costs for transport and labor. The point for locating an industry that minimizes costs of transportation and labor requires analysis of three factors: Material index The point of optimal transportation is based on the costs of distance to the "material index (MI)" – the ratio of weights of the intermediate products (raw materials or RM) to finished product or FP. a) RM is more than FP; MI>1 b) RM is equal to FP; MI=1 c) RM is less than FP; MI<1 In one scenario (a), the weight of the final product is less than the weight of the raw material going into making the product—the weight losing industry. For example, in the copper industry, it would be very expensive to haul raw materials to the market and process them there, so the processing occurs near the raw materials. (Besides mining, other primary activities (or extractive industries) are considered material oriented: timber mills, furniture manufacture, most agricultural activities, etc.. Often