Edward West

Sir Edward West (1 March 1782 – 18 August 1828) was a British judge who served in India and an economist. He is known for his statement of the law of diminishing returns in his ''Essay on the Application of Capital to Land'' (1815, p. 2):

The principle is simply this, that in the progress of the improvement of cultivation the raising of rude produce becomes progressively more expensive, or, in other words, the ratio of the net produce of land to its gross produce is constantly diminishing.

Here the gross produce means the value of total output and the net is the gross minus the cost of production and exclusive of profit and rent. Provided by Wikipedia