biology

Joël de Rosnay

Joël de Rosnay is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Joël de Rosnay rather than just read about it. In short: Joël de Rosnay (born 12 June 1937), is a Mauritius-born French scientist and writer, presently President of Biotics International, a consulting company specialized in the impact of new technologies on industries, and Special Advisor to the President of the Universcience (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and Palais de la Découverte) of which he was Director of Forecasting and Assessment until June 2002. Biography…

Key takeaways

Joël de Rosnay belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Joël de Rosnay to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Joël de Rosnay from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Joël de Rosnay (born 12 June 1937), is a Mauritius-born French scientist and writer, presently President of Biotics International, a consulting company specialized in the impact of new technologies on industries, and Special Advisor to the President of the Universcience (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and Palais de la Découverte) of which he was Director of Forecasting and Assessment until June 2002.

Biography

Family Descendant of a family of planters from the island of Mauritius (Fromet de Rosnay), Joël de Rosnay was born in Curepipe, Mauritius, and has lived in Paris since 1945. He is the son of the Franco-Mauritian painter Gaëtan de Rosnay (1912-1992) and Natacha Koltchine (born in Saint Petersburg in 1914, fleeing the Russian Revolution and arriving in Biarritz, southern France in the 1920s, died in Sens in 2005), and the brother of Zina Dotézac and Arnaud de Rosnay. Joël de Rosnay is married to Stella Jebb, daughter of Lord Gladwyn Jebb, former acting Secretary-General of the UN (1945 - 1946) and British Ambassador to Paris from 1954 to 1960. He is the father of Tatiana de Rosnay, a writer, Cécilia de Vaucleroy, a product design consultant, and Alexis de Rosnay, a former banker at Lazard Frères, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan, now working at Barclays. From 1975 to 1985 he was Director of Research Applications at l'Institut Pasteur (the Pasteur Institute in Paris). Former research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of biology and computer graphics, he was successively Scientific Attaché to the French Embassy in the United States, and Scientific Director of European Enterprises Development Company (a venture capital group) from 1971 to 1975. As well as several reports, namely : Biotechnologies and Bio Industry (1979), an annex to the report Sciences de la vie et Société by Professors Gros, Jacob and Royer. He was also co-responsible for the report which led to the creation of CESTA (Centre d'Etudes des Systèmes et des Technologies Avancées / Center for the study of systems and advanced technologies, 1982).

As author De Rosnay is particularly interested in advanced technologies and the applications of system theory; his concept of the macroscope, a "big picture" view of the globe and its residents, was published in 1975. On these subjects, he wrote :

Le Macroscope (1975); Les Chemins de la Vie (The paths of life) (1983) and Le Cerveau Planétaire (The planetary brain) (1986). De Rosnay wrote for several years on new technologies for the economic magazine L'Expansion. He speaks on the same subject for Europe1, a radio network. De Rosnay is the author of several scientific books aimed at a wider public, such as:

Les origines de la vie, (The origins of life) (1966); La malbouffe (the wrong food) (1979); La Révolution Biologique, (the biological revolution) (1982); Branchez-vous (Plug-in!), (1984), a book on personal computers; L'Aventure du Vivant (The adventure of life) (1988); L'avenir en direct (Live from the future) (1989); Les rendez-vous du Futur (Rendez-vous with the future) (1991); L'Homme Symbiotique, regards sur le 3eme millénaire (The Symbiotic Man, a look into the third millennium) (1995); La plus belle histoire du monde, (The most beautiful history of the World) with Yves Coppens, Hubert Reeves and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 1996; Une vie en plus with Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, François de Closets and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil 2005; La révolte du Prolétariat with the collaboration of Carlo Revelli, Fayard, 2006. 2020 : Les scénarios du futur, Fayard, 2008. Surfer la Vie, Sur-Vivre dans la société fluide, LLL, May 2012; Je cherche à comprendre...les codes cachés de la nature LLL, 2016; La Symphonie du vivant, comment l'épigénétique va changer votre vie, LLL, 2018. De Rosnay’s ideas have inspired various technology businesses and modern cultural works by creatives, entrepreneurs, and academics, notably around his notion of the cybiont. In The Symbiotic Man, De Rosnay defines a unit of a holistic social structure, expanding on the concept of the singular living holobiont to also include the totality of human-made machines. He terms this set the cybiont - an emerging “planetary macro-organism” of biological and synthetic entities, all operating in synchrony as a cybernetic system.

Personal life De Rosnay's wife Stella is the daughter of Gladwyn Jebb, 1st Baron Gladwyn. His daughter is novelist Tatiana de Rosnay. De Rosnay is famous for pioneering surfing in France in 1957 and created the Surf Club de France in 1964.

References

External links Media related to Joël de Rosnay at Wikimedia Commons French Wikiquote has quotations related to: Joël de Rosnay Crossroads to the future Joël de Rosnay interviewed by Denis Failly for his book La Révolte du pronetariat (in French) La Révolte du pronetariat index Archived 2013-11-12 at the Wayback Machine (in French) Joël de Rosnay talks about surfing Video on YouTube (in French)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Joël de Rosnay

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Joël de Rosnay claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Joël de Rosnay before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Joël de Rosnay ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Joël de Rosnay

In research: Joël de Rosnay appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Joël de Rosnay in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Joël de Rosnay is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1937 births, 20th-century French biologists, French male non-fiction writers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Joël de Rosnay outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Joël de Rosnay in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Joël de Rosnay means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Joël de Rosnay in simple terms?

Why does Joël de Rosnay matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Joël de Rosnay?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Joël de Rosnay.