François Simiand

François Simiand ( born April 18, 1873 in Grières, † April 13, 1935 in Saint- Raphaël ) was a French historian of economic and social history and sociologist. In 1932 he became a professor at the College de France.

Simiand attended the Lycée Henri IV ( where his teacher was Henri Bergson ) and studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure with the degree in philosophy in 1896 with top marks. Instead of a PhD and an academic career, he then studied law and wrote his thesis in 1904 on wages French miners in the coal - mining industry. He became librarian in 1901 at the French Ministry of Labour and taught economics at the École pratique des hautes études. He also was at the turn of the century staff at the Année Sociologique of Émile Durkheim. During World War II he was in the Ministry of Armaments and was followed by a year of work director for the province of Alsace- Lorraine. In addition, he taught from 1919 as professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

Simiand sought to establish the economic history and sociology in France on a strict quantative statistical basis. He examined the historical development of salaries, price fluctuations and business cycles.

He was in 1898 one of the signatories of the petition in Le Temps in the Dreyfus affair in favor of Dreyfus.

Writings

• La Méthode positive en science économique. PUF, Paris 1911
• Le Salaire: l' evolution sociale et la monnaie. 3 volumes, Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1932
• Recherches sur le mouvement anciennes et nouvelles général des prix du VXIe au XIXe siècle. Domat - Montclirctien, Paris 1932
• Les Fluctuations économiques à longue période de la crise mondiale. 1933
• La psychologie sociale et les crises of the fluctuations de courte durée économiques. Félix Alcan, Paris 1937