Théodore Monod | |
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| Born | 9 April 1902 |
| Died | 22 November 2000 (aged 98) Versailles, Yvelines, France |
Théodore André Monod (9 April 1902 – 22 November 2000) was a French naturalist, humanist, scholar and explorer.
Théodore Monod | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | 9 April 1902 |
| Died | 22 November 2000 (aged 98) Versailles, Yvelines, France |
Théodore André Monod (9 April 1902 – 22 November 2000) was a French naturalist, humanist, scholar and explorer.
Monod was educated at École alsacienne and obtained a doctorate in science from Sorbonne University in 1922. [1] [2] Early in his career, Monod was made professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and founded the Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire in Senegal. He became a member of the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer in 1949, member of the Académie de marine in 1957 and member of the Académie des sciences in 1963. In 1960, he became one of the founders of the World Academy of Art and Science .
He began his career in Africa with the study of monk seals on Mauritania's Cap Blanc peninsula. However, he soon turned his attention to the Sahara desert, which he would survey for more than sixty years in search of meteorites. Though he failed to find the meteorite he sought, he discovered numerous plant species as well as several important Neolithic sites. Perhaps his most important find (together with Wladimir Besnard) was the Asselar man, a 6,000-year-old skeleton of the Adrar des Ifoghas that many scholars believe to be the first remains of a distinctly black person. In the early 1960s he discovered the caravan wreck site at Ma'adin Ijafen. [3] [4]
Monod, the son of Wilfred Monod, attended the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. [5] His father was a pastor of l'Oratoire du Louvre, which Theodore also attended. He subsequently became the founding president of the Francophone Unitarian Association (1986-1990), the first openly Unitarian religious organization established in France and later sponsored a spin-off of the AUF known as the Fraternal Assembly of Christian Unitarians.
Monod was also politically active, taking part in pacifist and antinuclear protests until only some months before his death. He wrote several articles and books that adumbrated the emerging environmentalist movement. He described himself as a Christian anarchist. [6]
In 1970, he led an International Committee for the Defence of Ernest Ouandié during his trial. The Cameroonian revolutionary was executed on the orders of the regime.
Monod was the great-grandson of Frédéric Monod. He shared a common ancestor with biologist Jacques Monod, the musician Jacques-Louis Monod, the politician Jérôme Monod and director Jean-Luc Godard.
Monod was a strict vegetarian who advocated for animal rights. [6] He never touched alcohol, meat or tobacco. [2] He once walked 600 miles in the Sahara to prove that he had sufficient stamina without eating meat. [6]
The scientific bibliography of Théodore Monod includes more than 700 works on topics – from his thesis subject, the Gnathiidae (a family of parasitic Isopoda), to the subject that he held close to his heart until his death: the Scaridae, which he published on in 1994 in collaboration with Canadian research scientist Andrea Bullock.
Monod discovered and gave his name to 30 species of insects and plants, 50 crustaceans and several fish. [6]
Works re-edited and released by Actes Sud (Arles):
Nouakchott is the capital and largest city of Mauritania. Located in the southwestern party of the country, it is one of the largest cities in the Sahara. The city also serves as the administrative and economic center of Mauritania.
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine.
Thomas Corneille was a French lexicographer and dramatist.
François Jacob was a French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through regulation of transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff.
Patrick Chesnais is a French actor, film director and screenwriter.
The Lycée Henri-IV is a public secondary school located in Paris. Along with the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, it is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and demanding sixth-form colleges (lycées) in France.
Émile-Félix Gautier or Gauthier was a French geographer.
The Chinguetti meteorite is a find reputed to come from a large unconfirmed 'iron mountain' in Africa.
Jean Duvignaud was a French novelist, sociologist and anthropologist. He was born in La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, on February 22, 1921.
Henri Gadeau de Kerville was a French zoologist, entomologist, botanist and archeologist best known for his photographs of these subjects and especially for his work "Les Insectes phosphorescents: notes complémentaires et bibliographie générale : avec quatre planches chromolithographiées", Rouen, L. Deshays, 1881.
Étienne Pierre Ventenat was a French botanist born in Limoges. He was the brother of naturalist Louis Ventenat (1765–1794).
Ma'adin Ijafen is an archaeological site in an area of dunes in the Sahara in eastern Mauritania. It was first discovered in the early 1960s by the French explorer Théodore Monod. Monod followed up on information provided by local hunters, searching for evidence to confirm the magnitude of the historical trans-Saharan copper trade. 450 mi (720 km) into the desert, he located bundles of cowrie shells and ingots of brass wrapped in ropes and matting and hidden in the sand.
Étienne Wolff was a French biologist, specialising in experimental and teratological embryology. He led the Société zoologique de France from 1958 and was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1963.
The Lycée Pierre-Corneille is a state secondary school located in the city of Rouen, France.
Jean-Louis-Théodore Bachelet was a 19th-century French historian and musicologist.
Events from the year 1593 in France
Theodosius of Arles, was Archbishop of Arles c. 632–650.
Jules Adeline was a French designer, engraver, illustrator, and historian. He produced over 9,000 images; largely devoted to Rouen and the surrounding areas.
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