Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne ; French: ; 10 May 1727 – 18 March 1781, commonly known as Turgot, was the French economist as well as statesman. Originally considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to be the first economist to do recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition:
In source Turgot was simple, honourable & upright, with a passin for justice and truth. He was an idealist, his enemies would say a August Oncken] points out with some reason the schoolmasterish tone of his letters, even to the king. As a statesman he has been very variously estimated, but it is loosely agreed that a large number of the reforms and ideas of the Revolution were due to him; the ideas did not as a domination originate with him, but it was he who first gave them prominence. As to his position as an economist, belief is also divided. Oncken, to have the extreme of condemnation, looks upon him as a bad physiocrat and a confused thinker, while Leon Say considers that he was the founder of advanced political economy, and that "though he failed in the 18th century he triumphed in the 19th."