Ethnologist Jean Malaurie, specialist in the Far North, died at the age of 101

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: ULF ANDERSEN / Aurimages via AFP 5:25 p.m., February 5, 2024

The ethnologist and publisher Jean Malaurie, tireless advocate of the "first peoples" particularly of the Far North, died in Dieppe at the age of 101, his son Guillaume announced to AFP on Monday. An explorer, scientist and adventurer, he spent ten years of his life between Greenland and Siberia. He was made famous by a book in defense of the Inuit,

by Plon in 1955, where he denounced the destruction of their territory by the American army for the establishment of an air base, and described the mode life of a little-known people.

“He leaves a work of masterful depth”

The book was the first title in a successful collection that still exists, Human Earth. Jean Malaurie directed it until 2016, and was its honorary president until 2021. "He was a giant. Jean Malaurie has just left for the other side of the horizon. He leaves behind a work of a masterful depth", wrote on X the anthropologist Philippe Charlier, who has directed this collection since 2021.

He was a giant. Jean Malaurie has just left for the other side of the horizon. He leaves behind a work of masterful depth, and the #TerreHumaine collection which remains perhaps his finest testimony of commitment and virtue! pic.twitter.com/oGnQg1YuzH

— Philippe Charlier (@doctroptard) February 5, 2024

He was in the spotlight at the end of January at UNESCO with an exhibition of his pastels, depicting the polar regions. He published

in 2001 .

A great intellectual, recognized for his crucial contributions to Arctic ethnology, and a force of nature, he published his memoirs,

, in 2022, again with Terre humaine. This title was an evocation of his scientific conception according to which the culture and belief system of the individual (the soul) could not be understood without taking into account its relationships with its natural environment (the stone).