Henri Atlan
Henri Atlan (born 27 December 1931, Blida, French Algeria) is a French biophysicist and philosopher.
Early life and education
Born to a Jewish family in French Algeria, Atlan gained degrees in medicine and biophysics at the University of Paris (now University Paris Diderot) . He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley working on ageing and mutation.
Career
Influenced by Heinz von Foerster, Atlan became interested in applying cybernetics and information theory to living organisms, and went to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot to work under the biophysicist Aharon Katchalsky.[citation needed] In 1972, he returned to Paris; and, in that year, his 1972 work on information theory and self-organising systems, entitled "L'organisation biologique et la théorie de l'information", received a wide readership.[citation needed] In Paris, he then taught biophysics at the Hôtel-Dieu and, later, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center.[citation needed]
His participation with Francisco Varela at a conference in Cerisy-la-Salle encouraged interest in cognitive science in France.[citation needed] Atlan was instrumental in the establishment of the Centre de Recherche en Epistémelogie Appliquée (CREA) at the École Polytechnique, and was appointed in 1983 to the Comité Consultatif National d'Éthique pour la Sciences de a Vie et de la Santé (National Advisory Committee on Ethics in the Life Sciences and Medicine). He has been appointed to a chair in the philosophy of biology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.[citation needed]
He is also a member of Collegium International,[citation needed] an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just, and an economically sustainable world.
Works
- Selected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism, 2011, ISBN 9780823231812
- L'organisation biologique et la théorie de l'information, 1972
- Entre le cristal et la fumée: Essai sur l'organisation de vivant, 1979
- À tort et à raison: Inter-critique de la science et du mythe, 1986
- Tout, non, peut-être: Education et vérité, 1991
- Les étincelles de hasard, 1999
References
- Dupuy, Jean-Pierre (2006), "Henri Atlan", The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-10790-7
External links
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- 1931 births
- Living people
- People from Blida
- Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
- French biologists
- French biophysicists
- French Jews
- French people of Algerian-Jewish descent
- French philosophers
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty
- Jewish philosophers
- Jewish scientists
- Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
- Officiers of the Ordre national du Mérite
- University of Paris alumni
- University of California, Berkeley alumni
- French male writers