Gérard Mégie

The 2004 Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership is awarded to Gérard Mégie for his original contributions to ozone research and the structuring of environmental research worldwide.

Gérard Mégie’s research deals with the physical and chemical balances of the Earth’s atmosphere, in particular with the development of original methods for measuring atmospheric variables by laser sounding, the modeling of the natural variability of ozone and how it is influenced by human activities. He is also currently working on the chemistry of the troposphere as a function of the increase of pollution by photo-oxidizing agents at different time and space scales and, more generally, on relationships between changes in the atmosphere’s chemical composition and the problems of climatic changes.

A member of many European and international scientific committees, Gérard Mégie has made a considerable contribution to the structuring of environmental research at the national, European and international level. He chaired the International ozone Committee of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) from 1988 to 1996 and the Earth Observation Committee of the European Space Agency (ESA) from 1994 to 1999. He is co-chairman of the International Scientific Committee of the Montreal Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer. In this capacity, Gérard Mégie was responsible for the supervision of international reports on the status of the stratospheric ozone layer in 1958 and 2002.

Gérard Mégie, born in 1946, holds a Ph.D. in science (1976). Professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie since 1988, he has been a member of the Institut Universitaire de France since 1998. He was director of the Aeronomy Department of the CNRS from 1996 to 2000 and created the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute for Environmental Science, which he directed from 1991 to 2000. He was appointed chairman of CNRS in 2000.

Gérard Mégie is the author of more than 240 scientific publications, almost 100 of which have appeared in specialized international journal with review committees. He is the author of two books on stratospheric ozone: Stratosphère et Couche d’Ozone (Editions Masson) in 1991 and Ozone, l’équilibre rompu (Presses du CNRS) in 1989.

Gérard Mégie received the Grand Prix of the International Union of Air Pollution Prevention Associations (1991) and the Grand Prix of the French Atomic Energy Commission of the French Academy of Sciences (2001). He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of several national and international academies.