Jean Rostand

Jean Rostand (born October 30, 1894 in Paris , † September 4, 1977 in Ville-d'Avray ) was a French biologist , philosopher and writer .

Rostand was the son of the playwright Edmond Rostand and the poet Rosemonde Gérard and brother of the writer Maurice Rostand . He studied at the Sorbonne , where he graduated in philosophy in 1911 and degrees in physiology , biochemistry and mineralogy in 1913/14 . At that time he already had his own laboratory in his parents' house in Cambon in the Pyrenees. As a biologist he worked, among other things, on experiments on embryology and parthenogenesis .

But above all he is known as a writer, as a public intellectual (for example against the death penalty and against nuclear armament) with humanistic concerns. He was a well-known free thinker , honorary president of the Society of Freethinkers (Libre Pensée). He wrote numerous books in which he popularized the sciences, especially on the history of biology, but also, for example, on eugenics and also the idea of cryonics , he is said to have provided Robert Ettinger .

In 1936 he helped set up the biology department in the Palais de la Découverte in Paris.

In 1959 he was accepted into the Académie française . In 1955 he received the Grand prix de la Fondation Singer-Polignac. Jean Rostand was awarded the Kalinga Prize for Popularizing Science in 1959 . In his honor, the Rostand Island named in Antarctica.

In 1971, Jean Rostand was one of the founding members of the Choisir la cause des femmes association, alongside Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi .

Web links

• Homage web presence dedicated to him with biography (French)
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)