Albert Jacquard

Albert Jacquard (23 December 1925 – 11 September 2013) was a French geneticist, popularizer of science and essayist. He was well known for defending ideas related to science, degrowth, needy persons and the environment. He was 10 years an active member of the French communist party (PCF). He was born in Lyon to a catholic and conservative family from the region of Franche-Comté (east of France). At the age of nine, he was disfigured after a car accident in which his brother died. In 1943, he earned two baccalaureates in mathematics and philosophy. In 1948, he earned a master's degree in public factory engineering from the French École Polytechnique and joined the French Institute of statistics. In 1951, he entered the French tobacco monopoly SEITA (which merged with its Spanish counterpart Tabacalera to form Altadis in 1999) as an organisation and method engineer. Then, he worked as a rapporteur in the French Court of Financial Auditor (equivalent to the US Government Accountability...