Christian Amatore


Christian Amatore is a French chemist and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He is an author of works in electrochemistry.

Biography

Coming from a modest family, he spent a large part of his childhood in Algeria in several garrison towns of Laghouat, Hain-el-Adjar, Sidi Bel Abbès where his father was an NCO of the Foreign Legion. He followed his father's advice "if you are intelligent but you have no education, you remain mute" and followed brilliant studies in Algeria and then in France where his Blackfoot family was repatriated: first to the Lycée Pascal-Paoli in Corte, then to the Lycée Thiers in Marseille where he completed two years of preparatory classes, and finally to the École normale supérieure where he obtained the agrégation de chimie in 1974. At the age of 18, he opted for French nationality. CNRS researcher, following his thesis at the University of Paris-VII, he left for the United States for two years as Assistant Professor in an organometallic chemistry research laboratory where he met Mark Wightman at Indiana University with whom he had a pioneering role in the development of ultramicroelectrodes that he applied in artificial synapses. In 1984, he returned to France to found his laboratory at the ENS and became Director of the Chemistry Department at the ENS in 1997. He held these management functions until 2006.

Career