Vilfredo Pareto was born in Paris in 1848, the year of the revolution that brought the fall of the House of Bourbon and the rise of Louis Napoleon. Pareto’s father was an Italian nobleman and political exile, and his mother was French. With the issuance of a general amnesty, the family returned to Italy in 1868. Vilfredo graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Turin with a degree in engineering. He first worked for two Italian railways and then served as general superintendent of iron mines owned by a bank in Florence.