Knut Wicksell, Sweden's most important economist, was born in Stockholm as the youngest of six children. A quiet and sensitive boy, he was strongly affected by his mother's death when he was 7 and his father's death eight years later. At age 15, he became a devout member of the Swedish Lutheran Church and devoted himself to the study of mathematics. In 1871, after only two years of study, he earned a degree in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Eventual doubts about his faith, along with a severe emotional crisis in 1874, ended his religious period. He then became a freethinker and outspoken critic of religion, rejecting all forms of ceremony, including baptism, confirmation, and even marriage.
While still studying mathematics, Wicksell came across a popular book that turned his attention to social issues, and he began to deliver lectures and publish editorials on alcoholism, prostitution, and birth control. The very mention of these topics was largely taboo, but Wicksell was soon attracting large audiences. By the early 1880s, he was receiving speaker fees for as many as 10 appearances per week.
In the 1880s Wicksell's interest shifted to economics, which he studied in Germany and Austria. He met his future wife, Anna, while in Germany, but only proposed a common-law marriage on the grounds that he opposed the pomp and circumstance of a formal wedding. Returning to Stockholm in 1890, Wicksell took up journalism and lecturing as a source of income. His opposition to a longer military draft and support for unilateral disarmament in 1892 made him as controversial as ever. His first important work, Value, Capital and Rent, appeared in 1893. It was followed by Studies in the Theory of Public Finance (1896), which pioneered the application of marginal utility to public-sector problems. Both were submitted as part of the requirements for a doctorate in economics, and in 1886 Wicksell received the degree magna cum laude. He could not, however, obtain a professorship