Alfred Legoyt

Alfred Legoyt (1812–1885) was a French statistician who organised the census of France in 1856, 1861 and 1866. With his access to vital statistics Legoyt was the most important official statistician of France and was the official delegate to the International Statistical Congresses held in different European cities between 1853 and 1876.

Early career Legoyt started his career as a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior and went on to be the deputy chief of the ministry's Bureau of Statistics in 1839. Legoyt replaced Alexandre Moreau De Jonnes as director of the Statistique Générale de la France in 1852. Unlike Moreau de Jonnès Legoyt placed more importance on the practical work of data collection rather than on classification and analysis.

The 1856 Census When Legoyt became director of SGF he took over the responsibility of organising the census from the bureau of statistics of the Ministry of the Interior and placed it under the stewardship of the SGF. In the words of Legoyt,

Legoyt held the position of director of SGF until the fall of the Second Empire in 1870.