Jean Malaurie

Jean-Noël Leonard Malaurie was a French anthropologist, geomorphologist, and explorer born on December 22, 1922, in Mainz. He studied at the Sorbonne and joined the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in 1948. Malaurie performed his first missions to Greenland with Paul-Émile Victor between 1948 and 1949. In May 1951, he became one of the first two men to reach the North Geomagnetic Pole. He founded the Terre Humaine series in 1954 and published the book Les Derniers Rois de Thulé in 1955. In 1957, he was elected to the first chair of Polar Geography at the EHESS. His scientific recordings included the 1988 collection Chants et Tambours Inuit de Thulé au Détroit de Béring. Malaurie authored Ultima Thulé (1990) and was named a Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur in 2015. He received the Grand Cross of the Ordre national du Mérite in 2021. Malaurie died on February 5, 2024, in Dieppe.