Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the life of Vilfredo Pareto and his theory of ophelimity. Pareto's theory of ophelimity represents the main pillar of his momentous contribution to economic theory. The accidents that have punctuated the history of the theory of ophelimity illustrate better than anything else the attitude of the economic profession toward Pareto's path-breaking ideas. They also illustrate how liable to perdurable errors even great scholars, especially economists, are. Pareto's own ideas met with an incredible lack of attention from most economists during his life as well as during many years thereafter. In the last edition of Alfred Marshall's Principles (1920), Pareto is mentioned only once, as one of many who “have been inclined towards mathematical modes of thought”. No wonder then that for most of his life Pareto worked in isolation, a fact which earned him the famous epithet of the hermit of Céligny.
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