Albert Jacquard


Albert Jacquard was a French far left 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.

Beginnings

He was born in Lyon to a catholic and conservative family from the region of Franche-Comté. 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.

High-level civil servant

In 1951, he entered the French tobacco monopoly SEITA as an organisation and method engineer. Then, he worked as a rapporteur in the French Court of Financial Auditor and as a senior executive in the French Health ministry.
In 1966, he went to Stanford University to study population genetics as a Research worker. Back in France in 1968, he joined French Institute for Demographic Studies as supervisor of the genetics department.
In 1973, he was appointed expert in genetics in the World Health Organisation. He retired in 1985.

University professor

While he was still working in the World Health Organization, he taught as visiting professor at several universities such as the University of Geneva in Switzerland, Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris or the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
As a recognition for his work, he was awarded the French Légion d'honneur, the French Ordre national du Mérite and the Fondation de France scientific medal.

Ethical and political involvement

While he was part of the French Consultative Committee of Ethics in the early 1990s, he took a strong stand against commercial use of the human genome.
He was very close to the anti-globalization movement and regularly came to the defense of illegal immigrants and homeless people in France.
He wrote several books to expose his views and share his experience with new generations.
He made a variety of public statements in favor of choosing Esperanto as a universal second language in contradiction to tendencies in Europe to use English as a second language.

Scientific work