Curated playlist
Academic staff of the Collège de France
- Muzaffar AlamHistorian Muzaffar Alam reads the Mughal empire's own records in the original Persian.
- Eugène BurnoufEugène Burnouf died in 1852, the same year his Lotus Sutra translation finally appeared in print.
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault's surgeon father expected him to become a surgeon too. He became a leading thinker on power instead.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Yann LeCunYann LeCun spent a postdoc year under Geoffrey Hinton, then shared a Turing Award with him.
- Pierre GassendiIn 1631, Pierre Gassendi became the first person on record to watch a planet cross the Sun. It was Mercury.
- Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was walking home through the streets of Paris on the 25th of February 1980 when the driver of a laundry van knocked him down. A month later, on the 26th of March, he died from the pulmonary complications that followed. He…
- Georges DumézilGeorges Dumézil was shut out of French academic jobs after his thesis. His teacher told him to go abroad, to Istanbul.
- Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy refused to call himself a poet. He said he was a critic or a historian.
- Jean-Baptiste SayNapoleon's government removed economist Jean-Baptiste Say from office in 1804. He then built a cotton mill instead.
- Jules MicheletHistorian Jules Michelet was the first to use "Renaissance" for a whole era.