Evry Schatzman

Evry Léon Schatzman (16 September 1920 – 25 April 2010 ) was a French scientist hailed as "the father of modern French astrophysics".

Background Schatzman was born in Romanian-Jewish family. His father, , was a dentist born in Tulcea, Romania, and emigrated at a young age with his family to Palestine. Schatzman began his studies at the École normale supérieure in November 1939. After the German invasion of France, Schatzman fled occupied France, arriving in Lyon in January 1942. He worked there for a year and then moved to Haute-Provence Observatory where he hid under the pseudonym Antoine Emile Louis Sellier.

Career He was appointed by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in autumn 1945 and received his doctorate in March 1946.

His daughter, mathematician Michelle Schatzman, was born in 1949. , §5–6 and explained pressure ionization in white dwarf atmospheres. Schatzman proposed the mechanism of magnetic braking, by which outflows slow down the stellar rotation.

Schatzman wrote the astrophysics textbook Astrophysique Générale and contributed greatly to the popularity of astrophysics in France. He received the Prix Jules Janssen of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society) in 1973, the Holweck Prize in 1985, and the Gold Medal of the CNRS in 1983. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1985. He criticized science communicators who legitimized pseudo-scientific beliefs, such as Hubert Reeves.

He was a member of the Communist Party after the war. He left in 1959, in protest over Stalin's heavy-handed regime. He led a teachers' union from 1953 to 1957 and was active with the World Federation of Scientific Workers.

Selected works Origine et évolution des mondes, Paris: A. Michel, 1957. Translated into Spanish by Raquel Rabiela de Gortari and Arcadio Poveda as Origen y evolución del universo, México: UNAM, 1960; translated into English by Bernard and Annabel Pagel as The origin and evolution of the universe, New York: Basic Books, 1965. White Dwarfs, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1958. (with Jean-Claude Pecker) Astrophysique Générale, Paris: Masson, 1959. Our Expanding Universe, New York: McGraw–Hill, 1992. (with Françoise Praderie) Les Etoiles, Paris: Paris Interéditions et ed. du CNRS, 1990. Translated into English by A. R. King as The Stars, Berlin: Springer, 1993.