Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher was a German economist from Hanover. He studied at Göttingen, where he became a member of Corps Hannovera, and Berlin, and obtained a professorship at Göttingen in 1844, and subsequently at Leipzig in 1848. The main origins of the historical school of political economy may be traced to Roscher. Roscher tried to establish the laws of economic development by using the historical method from investigation of histories legal, political, cultural and other aspects, and developed a cyclical theory where nations and their economies pass though youth, manhood, and senile decay.