Haakon Chevalier (1901–1985)

Haakon Chevalier was born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey to Therese (Roggen) and Emile Chevalier, of Norwegian and French descent. He became a translator and professor of French literature at the University of California-Berkeley. After working as a translator for the French government at the first meeting of the United Nations in 1945, he was asked by the U.S. War Department to serve as an interpreter at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He was later responsible, with Leon Dostert, for the introduction of simultaneous interpretation at the UN. Chevalier was a close friend of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Their relationship led to Chevalier being called before the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities, after which he lost his job at UC Berkeley in 1950. He moved to Paris, where he continued to work as a translator of authors such as André Malraux and Salvador Dali, and also wrote his own fiction and nonfiction works. In 1965, he published Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship.