Schatzman, Evry Léon

Born Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France, 16 September 1920

Died Paris, France, 25 April 2010

There is hardly a field of theoretical astrophysics that was not addressed by Evry Schatzman. He was a pioneer in the study of white dwarfs during the 1940s and was one of the proponents of the wave heating theory of the solar corona. He made important contributions to the fields of internal stellar structure, novae, mechanisms of acceleration of cosmic rays, the role of turbulent diffusion in stellar evolution and its consequences for the lithium abundance, and the rate of solar neutrinos. Schatzman is mostly recognized as the creator of the French school of theoretical astrophysics. Although he was not the first theoretician of astrophysics in his country, he was the first to have felt the need for a rapid development of this subject in France and the first to teach it and to guide the path of many young researchers. Many of them became involved, and some are leaders, in space science.