Chevalier , Michel , 1806-1879 , French economist

Michel Chevalier was born in Limoges in 1806. He was educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris. From 1830 to 1832 he was editor of the Saint-Simonian newspaper Le Globe, and was imprisoned for 6 months after the group and newspaper were banned. In the late 1830s his career in industry became successful. He became Professor of Political Economy at the Collège de France aged 35. Later in life, Chevalier became a politician: he was elected a député for Aveyron in 1845 and appointed a senator in 1860. He was also one of the architects of the Cobden-Chevalier free-trade treaty between France and the United Kingdom. He died in Montpellier in 1879.