The Austrian school of economics dates from the 1871 publication of Carl Menger's Principles of Economics (Grundsätze der Vokswirtschaftslehre). Two of Menger's students, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Freidrich von Wieser, carried his work forward and made considerable contributions of their own. Especially notable is Böhm-Bawerk's analysis of capital and interest. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Ludwig von Mises and FriedrichHayek continued the Austrian tradition with their works on the business cycle and on the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism.
Austrian analysis fell out of favor with the economics profession during the fifties and sixties, but the awarding of the Nobel Prize in economics to Hayek in 1974, coupled with the spread of Mises's ideas by his students and followers (see 
http://www.mises.org), led to a revival of the Austrian school.
(excerpt from The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics)