Katia Krafft

Katia Krafft, born Catherine Marie Joséphine Conrad on April 17, 1942, in the town of Soultz-Haut-Rhin, in Alsace, to Charles and Madeleine Conrad. From her childhood, Katia Krafft showed an assertive character to the point of sometimes being turbulent. Her parents, Charles and Madeleine, respectively a worker and a schoolteacher, wanted their daughter to settle down and so they sent her to do part of her schooling in a religious school. She became a schoolteacher, then a mathematics professor, after passing the competitive examination for the École Normale in 1957 and studying physics and geochemistry at the University of Strasbourg. In 1969, she received the Fondation de la Vocation prize for her work in volcanology. In 1966, she met Maurice Krafft at the University of Besançon and they married in 1970. With little money, the Kraffts saved up to pay for a trip to Stromboli and photographed its almost continuous volcanic eruptions. Realizing that people were interested in this docum...