Claude Allègre facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Claude Allègre
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Claude Allègre in 2009
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| Minister of National Education | |
| In office 4 June 1997 – 28 March 2000 |
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| President | Jacques Chirac |
| Prime Minister | Lionel Jospin |
| Preceded by | François Bayrou |
| Succeeded by | Jack Lang |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 31 March 1937 Paris, France |
| Political party | PS (1973-2008) |
| Education | Lycée Charlemagne |
Claude Allègre (French pronunciation: [klodaˈlɛɡʁ]; born 31 March 1937) is a French politician and scientist.
Scientific work
The main scientific area of Claude Allègre was geochemistry. Allègre co-authored an Introduction to geochemistry in 1974. Since the 1980s, he mainly publishes popular science and political books.
In 1976, Allègre and volcanologist Haroun Tazieff started an intense and very public quarrel about whether inhabitants should evacuate the surroundings of the erupting la Soufrière volcano in Guadeloupe. Allègre, held that inhabitants should be evacuated, while Tazieff held that the Soufrière was harmless because all analyses pointed to a purely phreatic eruption with no sign of fresh magma. In part out of caution, the authorities decided to follow Allègre's advice and evacuate. The eruption did not result in any damage. Allègre, as the director of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, subsequently expelled Tazieff from that institute. The controversy dragged on for many years after the end of the eruption, and ended up in court.
Claude Allègre is an ISI highly cited researcher. He is retired and significantly diminished by a 2013 heart attack.
Political career
A former member of the French Socialist Party, Allègre is better known to the general public for his past political responsibilities, which include serving as Minister of Education of France in the Jospin cabinet from 4 June 1997 to March 2000, when he was replaced by Jack Lang. His outpourings of critiques against teaching personnel, as well as his reforms, made him increasingly unpopular in the teaching world. In 1996, Allegre published La Défaite de Platon, ("The defeat of Plato"), described by mathematician Pierre Schapira in the Spring 1997 edition of Mathematical Intelligencer as "one of the most savage broadsides against conceptual thought "
In the run-up to the 2007 French presidential election, he endorsed Lionel Jospin, then Dominique Strauss-Kahn, for the Socialist nomination, and finally sided with the ex-Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, against Ségolène Royal. When Chevènement decided not to run, he publicly declined to support Royal's bid for the presidency, citing differences over nuclear energy, GMOs and stem-cell research. He later became close to conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Awards and honors
- Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1985)
- V. M. Goldschmidt Award, (1986)
- Crafoord Prize for geology along with Gerald J. Wasserburg, (1986)
- Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, (1987)
- Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London, (1987)
- Member of the American Philosophical Society (1992)
- Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, (1994)
- French Academy of Sciences, (1995)
- William Bowie Medal, (1995)
- Arthur Holmes Medal, (1995)
See also
- Politics of France
