Jean-Pierre Changeux

educator, neuroscientist

Jean-Pierre Changeux, French neuroscientist, educator. Member of National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, European Molecular Biology Organization, European Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Romanian Academy Medical Sciences, Royal Academy of Sciences, American Neurology Association (honorary), Japanese Bio-chemical Society (honorary).

Background

Changeux, Jean-Pierre was born on April 7, 1936 in Domont, France.

Education

Bachelor, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1957; Master, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1958; Doctor, Paris University, 1964; Doctor (honorary), University Torino, Italy, 1989; Doctor (honorary), University Dundee, Scotland, 1992; Doctor (honorary), University Stockholm, 1994; Doctor (honorary), University Lausanne, Switzerland, 1996; Doctor (honorary), University of California at Los Angeles, 1997; Doctor (honorary), Montréal University, 2000; Doctor (honorary), Hebrew University Jerusalem, 2004; Doctor (honorary), Ohio State University, Columbus, 2007.

Career

Zoology instructor Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1958-1960, assistant professor faculty science, 1960-1966. Director unit molecular neurobiology Pasteur Institute, 1972—2006. Professor College de France, 1975—2006.

President National Advisory Committee Bioethics, France, 1992—1998.

Works

books

Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics
Do numbers and the other objects of mathematics enjoy a timeless existence independent of human minds, or are they the products of cerebral invention? Do we discover them, as Plato supposed and many others have believed since, or do we construct them? Does mathematics constitute a universal language that in principle would permit human beings to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the universe, or is it merely an earthly language that owes its accidental existence to the peculiar evolution of neuronal networks in our brains? Does the physical world actually obey mathematical laws, or does it seem to conform to them simply because physicists have increasingly been able to make mathematical sense of it? Jean-Pierre Changeux, an internationally renowned neurobiologist, and Alain Connes, one of the most eminent living mathematicians, find themselves deeply divided by these questions.

The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience and Human Knowledge (Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative)
In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is? Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights.

What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain
Will understanding our brains help us to know our minds? Or is there an unbridgeable distance between the work of neuroscience and the workings of human consciousness? In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these divergent approaches--and comes to a deeper, more complex perspective on human nature.

What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain
Will understanding our brains help us to know our minds? Or is there an unbridgeable distance between the work of neuroscience and the workings of human consciousness? In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these divergent approaches--and comes to a deeper, more complex perspective on human nature.

All works

Membership

Member of National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, European Molecular Biology Organization, European Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Romanian Academy Medical Sciences, Royal Academy of Sciences, American Neurology Association (honorary), Japanese Bio-chemical Society (honorary).