Odile Jacob is a French publisher who founded ''Les Éditions Odile Jacob'' in the middle of the 1980s. She is also a trained scientist, studying the workings of the brain, the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

and

thought In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, a ...

. She is a member of Le Siècle.Frédéric Saliba, 'Le pouvoir à la table du Siècle', in '' Stratégies'', issue 1365, April 14, 2005, p. 4

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Biography

Odile Jacob's father, François Jacob (17 June 1920 – 19 April 2013), was a French

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...

, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Having been awarded a grant from the

Sachs Foundation Sachs is a German surname, meaning "man from Saxony". Sachs is a common surname among Ashkenazi Jews from Saxony, in the United States sometimes adopted in the variant Zaks, supposedly in reference to the Hebrew phrase ''Zera Kodesh Shemo'' (ZaKS), ...

, Odile went to Harvard University to work on a thesis on the acquisition of concepts in children. She was a pioneer in this field, which at the time was neither taught nor researched in France. In the United States, she studied with many professors, including Roger Brown and Jerry Kagan, who urged her to stay at Harvard and pursue her career there. She also received an offer from the Department of

Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

at New York City’s

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

. Forced to return to France for family reasons, she decided to become a publisher. Her company's goals were to give readers an understanding of the scientific advances that have transformed our contemporary world, and to make scientists and scholars internationally recognized. Jacob's achievements also include the development of state-of-the-art software to teach science — mathematics, physics, biology — and to help children learn science as early as possible. The "Editions Odile Jacob" publishing company has published the work of many scientists and Nobel Prize winners including

Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...

, Ilya Prigogine,

James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...

, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Gerald Edelman, and Antonio Damasio. Jacob has also developed a strong list devoted to current affairs and politics: the former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama,

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...

, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, the former U.S. Secretary of the State

Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...

, the former Soviet President

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

, the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the former Soviet foreign affairs Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, the late French President

François Mitterrand François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he ...

, the former French President

Jacques Chirac Jacques René Chirac (, , ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. Chirac was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988, as well as Ma ...

, and also the former European Commission Chairman Jacques Delors.

Awards

* 1991: Grand Prix de l’Information Scientifique by the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

* 1995: businesswoman of the year by the Veuve Clicquot Prize Jury * 2004: recipient of the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Publishing in Turin, Italy and ''Doctor Honoris Causa'' by the '' Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale'' in Lausanne * 2010: Officier in the National Order of the Legion of Honor

References

External links

Editions Odile Jacob

Odile Jacob US Publishing Corporation

Yale University Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacob, Odile Harvard University alumni Rockefeller University alumni French psychologists French women psychologists French publishers (people) Officers of the Ordre national du Mérite 1954 births Living people