{{Short description|French astronomer (1920–2010)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}} {{infobox scientist | name = Evry Schatzman | image = EvrySchatzman43.tif | birth_date = {{birth date|1920|09|16|df=yes}} | birth_place = Neuilly-sur-Seine, France | death_date = {{death date and age|2010|04|25|1920|09|16|df=yes}} | death_place = Paris, France | citizenship = French | education = École normale supérieure<br>University of Paris | fields = Astrophysics | spouse = Ruth Fischer | children = Michelle Schatzman | awards = CNRS Gold Medal }} '''Evry Léon Schatzman''' (16 September 1920 – 25 April 2010<ref name=Fig/><ref name=UR>{{Cite web |last=Langevin-Joliot |first=Hélène |date=30 April 2010 |title=Evry Schatzman (1920–2010) |url=http://www.union-rationaliste.org/index.php/Editoriaux/Editorial-avril-2010.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316051203/http://www.union-rationaliste.org/index.php/Editoriaux/Editorial-avril-2010.html |archive-date=16 March 2012 |access-date=13 July 2020 |website=Union rationaliste}}</ref>) was a French scientist hailed as "the father of modern French astrophysics".<ref name=Fig>{{Cite news |date=28 April 2010 |title=Mort du père de l'astrophysique française |language=fr |trans-title=Father of French astrophysics dies |work=Agence France-Presse |url=https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2010/04/28/97001-20100428FILWWW00687-mort-du-pere-de-l-astrophysique-francaise.php |url-status=live |access-date=13 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181120015049/https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2010/04/28/97001-20100428FILWWW00687-mort-du-pere-de-l-astrophysique-francaise.php |archive-date=20 November 2018}}</ref>
==Background== Schatzman was born in Romanian-Jewish family. His father, Benjamin Schatzman, was a dentist born in Tulcea, Romania, and emigrated at a young age with his family to Palestine.<ref name=agora>{{cite news |url=http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/technologies/article/evry-schatzman-le-savant-des-77462 |author=Sylvain Rakotoarison |trans-title=Évry Schatzman, the star scientist |title=Évry Schatzman, le savant des astres |work=AgoraVox |date=25 June 2010 |access-date=13 August 2010 |language=fr}}</ref> 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'''.<ref name=agora/><ref>{{cite arXiv |last=Luminet |first=Jean-Pierre |author-link=Jean-Pierre Luminet |eprint=1503.08328 |title=Evry Léon Schatzman |class=physics.hist-ph |date=28 March 2015}}</ref><ref name=LeMonde>{{Cite news |last=Pecker |first=Jean-Claude |date=29 April 2010 |title=Evry Schatzman |language=fr |work=Le Monde |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2010/04/29/evry-schatzman_1344702_3382.html |url-status=live |access-date=13 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190709141552/https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2010/04/29/evry-schatzman_1344702_3382.html |archive-date=9 July 2019}}</ref> thumb|Artist's impression of debris around a white dwarf
==Career== He was appointed by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in autumn 1945 and received his doctorate in March 1946.<ref name=agora/> He taught at Princeton University and the Copenhagen Observatory. He was mentored during his year at Princeton by Lyman Spitzer and Martin Schwarzschild and works with Bengt Strömgren in Copenhagen.<ref name=LeMonde/>
He started teaching at the University of Paris in 1949, where he remained for 27 years, creating the first astrophysics chair in France. He worked for a long time at the Institut d'Astrophysique, a CNRS organization built in the garden side of l'Observatoire. During this period Schatzman also taught at the Université libre de Bruxelles ({{langx|en|Free University of Brussels}}). Schatzman became an associate professor at the University of Paris in 1954.<ref name=agora/><ref name=Fig/>
He founded an astrophysics laboratory in Meudon in 1964,<ref name=agora/> then in 1976 he moved to Nice Observatory, where he eventually became a full researcher. Schatzman retired in the fall of 1989.<ref name=Fig/><ref name="desire">[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996ARA&A..34....1S The Desire To Understand the World], Evry Schatzman, ''Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics'' '''34''' (1996), pp. 1–34. DOI [https://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.astro.34.1.1 10.1146/annurev.astro.34.1.1].</ref>
His daughter, mathematician Michelle Schatzman, was born in 1949.<ref name="desire"/>
==White dwarfs and wave heating== Schatzman worked on white dwarfs during the 1940s. He realized that the atmospheres of white dwarfs should be gravitationally stratified, with hydrogen on top and heavier elements below,<ref>[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1945AnAp....8..143S Théorie du débit d'énergie des naines blanches], Evry Schatzman, ''Annales d'Astrophysique'' '''8''' (January 1945), pp. 143–209.</ref><ref name="physrev">[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1990RPPh...53..837K Physics of white dwarf stars], D. Koester and G. Chanmugam, ''Reports on Progress in Physics'' '''53''' (1990), pp. 837–915.</ref><sup>, §5–6</sup> and explained pressure ionization in white dwarf atmospheres.<ref name="desire" /> He was one of the proponents of the wave heating theory of the solar corona.<ref>[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981ARA&A..19....7K On the theory of coronal heating mechanisms], Max Kuperus, James A. Ionson, and Daniel S. Spicer, ''Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics'' '''19''' (1981), pp. 7–40.</ref><ref>[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1949AnAp...12..203S The heating of the solar corona and chromosphere], Evry Schatzman, ''Annales d'Astrophysique'' '''12''' (1949), pp. 203–218.</ref> Schatzman proposed the mechanism of magnetic braking, by which outflows slow down the stellar rotation.<ref>Mestel, L., 1968, ''MNRAS'', '''138''', 359–391</ref>
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.<ref name=agora/><ref name="desire" />
The CNRS recognized Schatzman as "the father of modern French astrophysics".<ref name=Fig/>
==Skepticism and political involvement==
Schatzman advocated throughout his career for better science education to the general public. He was Chairperson of the Union rationaliste from 1970 to 2001. In 1992 the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) presented him with their ''Distinguished Skeptic'' Award.<ref name=UR/><ref name=Fig/><ref name="Dallas 1992">{{cite journal |title=CSICOP's 1992 Awards |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |date=1993 |volume=17 |issue=3 |page=236}}</ref> He criticized science communicators who legitimized pseudo-scientific beliefs, such as Hubert Reeves.<ref name=agora/>
He was a member of the Communist Party after the war. He left in 1959, in protest over Stalin's heavy-handed regime.<ref name=agora/><ref name=Fig/> 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, {{ISBN|0-07-055174-X}}. * (with Françoise Praderie) ''Les Etoiles'', Paris: Paris Interéditions et ed. du CNRS, 1990, {{ISBN|2-7296-0299-2}}. Translated into English by A. R. King as [https://books.google.com/books?id=FtZ_cNTPv8gC ''The Stars''], Berlin: Springer, 1993, {{ISBN|3-540-54196-9}}.
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Schatzman, Evry}} Category:1920 births Category:2010 deaths Category:20th-century French astronomers Category:20th-century French Jews Category:École normale supérieure (Paris) alumni Category:French astrophysicists Category:French Holocaust survivors Category:French people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:Members of the French Academy of Sciences Category:Officers of the Ordre national du Mérite Category:People from Neuilly-sur-Seine Category:Scientific skeptics Category:University of Paris alumni