Jacques Blamont | |
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| Born | Jacques Émile Blamont 13 October 1926 |
| Died | 13 April 2020(2020-04-13) (aged 93) Châtillon, France |
| Occupation | Astrophysicist |
| Known for | Aerospace programmes |
| Awards | Padma Shri Commander of the Legion of Honour Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit Commander of the Academic Palms Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit Rovel H. Prize Aimé Cotton Prize Leon Grelaud Prize CNES Vermeil Medal Prix Paul Doistau–Émile Blutet President's Silver Medal Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Award NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal USSR Academy of Sciences Gagarin Medal IAA Guggenheim Medal Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples IAATheodore von Karman Medal ISROVikram Sarabhai Medal Guiana Space Center Gold Medal Spie prize French Roberval Prize ISOE George N. Goddard Award NASA Distinguished Service Medal COSPAR Space Science Award |
Jacques Émile Blamont (French pronunciation:[ʒakbla.mɔ̃]; 13 October 1926 – 13 April 2020) was a Frenchastrophysicist,[1][2] author and the founder scientific and technical director ofNational Centre for Space Studies (CNES-Centre national d'études spatiales), known to have contributed to the development ofVeronique, the first rocket launched by France in 1957.[3][4] He was an elected fellow of theFrench Academy of Technologies[5] and a professor emeritus of thePierre and Marie Curie University (University of Paris VI).[6]
Blamont was a recipient of several national honours such asCommander of the Legion of Honour, the third highest French civilian honour,Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit, the second highest French civilian honour,Commander of the Academic Palms,Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, the highest French civilian honour,President's Silver Medal,Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples andPadma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.[3][7]
Blamont died on 13 April 2020 inChâtillon, Hauts-de-Seine, aged 93.[8]
Jacques Blamont was born in Paris in France on 13 October 1926[9][10] and did his studies at theÉcole Normale Supérieure[9] where he came in contact with theNobel laureate,Alfred Kastler, who was serving the institution as a professorial chair.[11] He graduated fromÉcole Normale Supérieure in 1948[6] and continued his studies at theNational Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as an associate of physical sciences.[3] In 1952, he reunited with Alfred Kastler in research onatomic coherence phenomenon and secured his doctoral degree (Doctor of Science) under his guidance in 1956.[3][6][10]
Blamont continued atCNRS for a year more as a research fellow[9] and joined the Aeronomy Service of the institution in 1957 where he became the deputy director in 1958.[9] In 1961, he was promoted as the director, a post he held till 1985.[3][6][9] He worked in many capacities during his stay with CNES, as a Scientific and Technical Director (1962–1972), as Top Scientific Advisor (1972–1982) and as an advisor to the President of CNES[10] from 1982.[3][6][12] During this period, he served thePierre and Marie Curie University as a professor without chair from 1957 to 1961, as a full professor from 1962 to 1996 and as a professor emeritus from there on.[4][6][9][12][13] He also worked as a research director atÉcole Militaire (Joint Defence College).[9]
He was made the firstVikram Sarabhai professor at thePhysical Research Laboratory in 1977,[14] a visiting professor at theCalifornia Institute of Technology in 1985 and a distinguished visiting scientist atJet Propulsion Laboratory during 1980–2001.[3][9] He was a member ofInternational Academy of Astronautics (1969),[15]Indian National Science Academy (1978),[16]National Academy of Sciences, USA (1980),[17] Air and Space Academy (1983),[18]Academia Europaea (1989),[19] Academy of Technology (2000),French Academy of Sciences[20] and theAmerican Philosophical Society[12](2002).[3][6] He was also a member of the advisory council of the Planetary Society.[4]
Blamont was one of the pioneers of French space programme[6][9] and his efforts were reported in the establishment ofCNES, the French Space Agency, in 1962.[4][10] He was known to have contributed to the launch of the first French rocket,Véronique,[10] in 1957.[4] He was one of the founders of Service d’aéronomie du CNRS, (Aeronomy Service ofCentre national de la recherche scientifique) and was its director from 1958 to 1985.[6] He participated, as a member of the steering groups,[10] in several global space missions such as theVoyager andPioneer-Venus ofNASA andVega mission of theSoviet Union toVenus andHalley's Comet and acted as the chief investigator of thePhobos program of theUSSR.[4][6][12] He assistedVikram Sarabhai[6] in the establishment of the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) which later grew to become the present dayIndian Space Research Organization (ISRO)[21] and played a part in providing the payload for the first two Indian rocket launches in 1963 and 1964.[6]
Blamont was credited with the discovery ofturbopause in 1959, theinterstellar wind in 1970, thehydrogen envelope of comets in 1971 and the polarnoctilucent clouds in 1973.[6][10] He was known to have made the measurement of the temperature of the neutral atmosphere from 100 to 500 km, the dynamic parameters of themesopause region, andEinstein's general relativityredshift on the Sun for the first time.[6][9][10] He was the head of the group which introduced scientific ballooning andLidar technology for atmospheric probing in Europe.[6] The image compression device developed by Blamont[10] is in use with various space agencies for planetary missions around the Moon, Mars andTitan.[6] He also contributed to the establishment of a launch range, inKourou, French Guiana.[9]
Blamont, besides writing several articles on science, authored four books,[9][12][22] viz.Vénus dévoilée, Voyage autour d'une planète (Venus Unveiled – 1987),[23]Le Chiffre et le Songe, Histoire politique de la découverte (The Digit and the – 1993),[10][24]Le Lion et le Moucheron, Histoire des Marranes de Toulouse (The Lion and the Midge – 2000)[25] andIntroduction au Siècle des Menaces (Introduction to the Age of Menaces – 2004).[26][27] He also mentored 80 research scholars in their doctoral research.[9]
Blamont received three of the highest French civilian honours,Commander of the Legion of Honour,Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit andGrand Cross of the National Order of Merit apart from the honour of theCommander of the Order of Academic Palms and the Silver Medal from thePresident of the French Republic in 1967.[3] He received theSoviet Order of Friendship of Peoples from the erstwhileSoviet Union in 1989[3] and theGovernment of India awarded him the fourth highest Indian civilian award ofPadma Shri in 2015.[7] He was a winner of NASA awards twice,NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1972[10] andNASA Distinguished Service Medal in 2000[3][6] and theFrench Academy of Sciences honoured him two times, Leon Grelaud Prize in 1960 andPrix Paul Doistau–Émile Blutet in 1967.[3] TheAcademy of Sciences of the USSR and theIndian Space Research Organization awarded him theYuri Gagarin Medal in 1985[10] and theVikram Sarabhai Medal in 1994 respectively.[3][6] He won three awards from theInternational Academy of Astronautics, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Award in 1967, Guggenheim Medal in 1986 and Von Karman Award in 1989.[3][6] He was also a recipient of Rovel H. Prize from the Faculty of Paris in 1957, Aimé Cotton prize of the French Physical Society in 1960,CNES Vermeil medal in 1967, Spie prize,[10] French Roberval Prize in 1993,[10] Gold Medal of the Guiana Space Center in 1995, George N. Goddard Award from theInternational Society for Optical Engineering in 1997,Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Space Science Award in 2004[3][6]andPrix International d'Astronautique (International Astronautics Prize), formerly known asPrix REP-Hirsch in 2019.
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