
À 360 Productions organize a tribute to Theodore Monod, the renowned French naturalist, geographer and explorer, at the Cité des Sciences, on the 4 of november 2006. Films, debates and lectures about this fantastic man.
Théodore André Monod (Rouen, April 9, 1902 - Versailles, November 22, 2000) was a French naturalist, explorer, and humanist scholar. In the course of his career, Monod was made director of the Institut d'Afrique noire, professor at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, member of the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer in 1949, member of the Académie de la Marine in 1957, and member of the Académie des Sciences in 1963.
He began his career with the study of monk seals on Mauritania's Cap Blanc peninsula. However, he soon turned his attention to the Sahara desert, which he would survey for more than sixty years in search of meteorites. Though he failed to find the meteorite he sought, he discovered numerous plant species as well as several important Neolithic sites. Perhaps his most important find was the Asselar man, a 6,000-year-old skeleton of the Adrar des Ifoghas that many scholars believe to be the first remains of a distinctly black individual.
Monod was also a political activist also took part in pacifist and antinuclear protests, and wrote several articles that adumbrated the emerging environmentalist movement.
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