On Tuesday evening, conservative economics professor Dave Brat won one of the most upsetting and surprising elections of the year when he beat House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary.

Brat's victory over Cantor in Virginia's 7th congressional district marked the first defeat of an incumbent House Majority Leader in a primary in U.S. history.

Little was known about Brat before the election, but now everyone is interested in learning more about the Tea Party-backed candidate.

Brat is a 49-year-old economics professor who has taught at the Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia for the last 18 years. He has also chaired the Randolph-Macon Department of Economics and Business since 1995.

The Michigan native earned his bachelor's degree from a small liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan named Hope College, before he went on to earn a master's of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in economics from American University, reports Politico.

He worked as a former economic consultant at the World Bank and at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in Detroit and Chicago. According to news reports, he also spent time working as an economist in the U.S. Army.

In January, Brat launched his campaign against the former House Minority Whip on a platform that promised to address the nation's ballooning deficit. Brat's candidacy wasn't championed by powerful national conservative groups and he raised just $206,000, compared to the $5.4 million that Cantor raised for his campaign, according to CNN. Nonetheless, the underfunded candidate proved that votes can speak louder than dollars by winning over 56 percent of voters and besting the No. 2 House Republican by about 7,000 votes, reports Time.

Brat, who is a practicing Catholic, described his victory as a "miracle" and told Fox News that "God acted through people on my behalf." He added that mainstream Republicans like Cantor are "paying too much attention to Wall Street, and not enough attention to Main Street."