A former member of the École française de Rome, honorary president of the "Société française de Photogrammétrie et télédétection", he was a lecturer at the École pratique des hautes études, then teaching assistant and finally professor of Latin language and literature at the University of Tours.

Born in Bourg-en-Bresse in 1929 to a family of teachers, Raymond Chevallier entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1950.

After he passed his agrégation in letters and graduated from the Ecole pratique des hautes études IVth section in 1955, he left for the École française de Rome of which he was a member from 1956 to 1958, and soon became one of the specialists of ancient Northern Italy.

His military service, carried out in the air force, revealed to him the interest of aerial photography for archaeological research and made him a very active emulator of the great precursors in this field, Father Antoine Poidebard and colonel Jean Baradez [fr].

It enabled him to keep abreast of the latest advances in technology and to perfect certain applications, such as the detection of traces of ancient cadastres, Roman roads or disappeared agglomerations.