Claudine Cohen
Claudine Cohen is a philosopher and science historian, writer, specialist in the history of
paleontology and representations of prehistoric times. She teaches at the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales , where she directs, with Henri Atlan , the research program "Biology
and Society."
Note the bulk of Claudine Cohen’s work is printed in her books, but the following links contain
lectures and radio programs where texts can be located:
Lecture on "Un Néandertalien dans le métro" :
http://www.bm-lyon.fr;/spip.php?page=video_cycle&id_cycle=40
presentation of la Méthode de Zadig:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgrp4b_claudine-cohen_news
http://www.france-info.com/chroniques-info-sciences-2011-02-10-la-paleoichnologie-ou-letude-des-empreintes-fossiles-514812-81-165.html#
Biography
( Bio adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
Born in Sfax (Tunisia), Claudine Cohen has lived in Nice and Paris where she lives today.
She is the mother of a child (Xenia Cohen).
After studying philosophy (Paris I), literary (Paris VIII, Paris III, Paris IV), and scientific (Paris VI,
Life Sciences and Earth) and after the meeting of André Leroi-Gourhan in Paris and then
Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard, she focused history and epistemology of evolutionary biology,
paleontology and prehistory of man.
She holds an Accreditation to supervise research in the History of Science and
Technology (Paris VII, 2004), a PhD from the University of Paris III (1989), an MA and a
postgraduate degree in Biology Earth Sciences (Option Vertebrate Paleontology) (Paris VI, 1977)
from the aggregation of Modern Literature (1980), a Master of Philosophy and CAPES (1975).
She has taught at the University of Paris III (1985-1989), Paris X (1990), before being elected to
the EHESS where she is currently a teacher-researcher (Professor) and Director of Research
"Biology and Society".
She was a visiting scholar in the United States at Princeton University (1994) and
member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2003), MIT (Dibner Institute for the
History of Science and Technology, Cambridge, (Massachusetts ) (1999-2000), New York Center
for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library (2001-2002) at the Getty Research
Institute in Los Angeles (2006-2007) and the Clark Institute for the History of Art in
Williamstown (Massachusetts) in 2009. She was a visiting professor at Stevens Institute of
Technology, Hoboken, NJ (USA) (2005) and has lectured in many universities in Europe, U.S.
(Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UCLA, Johns Hopkins , Columbia, Caltech) and in China, the elite
classes of the Consulate of France in Shanghai and the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Since
1999, she has given several series of lectures in Russia: at the Institute for the History of
Material Culture and at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
She has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute Diderot, the endowment
fund for the development of the social economy of Covéa since March 2009 .
Sources: Biographical notes in "Le Monde", January 10, 2000, the Who's Who in France (since
2002), Marquis Who's Who in the World (since 2010).
Itinerary and objects
Claudine Cohen focuses research on the history of life science and earth in the long term -from
the Renaissance to modern times.
Her work on the history of evolution, paleontology, paleoanthropology and the prehistory are
orientated in three directions: the study of epistemological and historical disciplines, through
the history of their concepts, their methods and their problems, the exploration of historical
changes in their procedures for authentication, validation and presentation of their evidence,
the study of their forms of discourse and investigation of the scientific imagination, both in the
development of scientific knowledge in its dissemination and outreach.

The Emergence of Life Sciences and Earth at the dawn of the Enlightenment - The
study of the work of an amateur naturalist illegal turn of the 17TH century, the Telliamed
Benoît de Maillet led Claudine Cohen explore the scientific and intellectual climate of
the years 1680-1720. This work extends the study of Protogaea of Leibniz 'theory of the
Earth "written during the same period, which she published in 2008 with the
collaboration of Andrew Wakefield's first translation from Latin into English.

History of Vertebrate Paleontology - By the story of a canonical object of paleontology
(the Mammoth), Claudine Cohen created a new and unprecedented development of the
discipline. It follows the changes in the outlook on a single object reporting the
developments of knowledge, questions and controversies, the different modes of
incorporation of the discourse, the different systems of thought and interpretation, and
meanings that these remains were discovered taken at different times and places,
culture and Western science

Imaginary representations of human prehistory -In collaboration with the paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, Claudine Cohen explored the circumstances of the
birth of Prehistoric Man in France in the nineteenth century and the biography of its
founder, Jacques Boucher de Perthes. This work was extended by questioning the place
of fantasy and fiction within the discourse of science and popular science.

Perspectives on Prehistoric Women - Focusing the analysis on mutations of prehistoric
representations of women, from the Darwinian sexual selection to the contemporary
feminist perspectives, Claudine Cohen, for the first time in France, reviewed the various
approaches that led to "see" that woman, often deemed "invisible" by archaeologists,
whereby it is impossible to distinguish in the lithic material or artistic waged
unreasonable differences relevant to an elucidation of the difference and roles sex in
prehistoric times.
References
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Boucher de Perthes, The origins of prehistoric romance with Jean-Jacques Hublin (Paris,
Belin, 1989) Work crowned by the French Academy (1990)
Fate of the mammoth (Seuil, 1994, repr. 2003) Roberval Prize (1995), Prix Jean Rostand
(1995)
The Human Origins (Seuil, 1999) Work crowned by the French Academy (1999)
Women's origins, Images of Women in Western prehistory (Paris, Belin Herscher 2003,
Reed. 2006) Work crowned by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; book
crowned by the Academy of Fine Arts (2003)
A Neanderthal in the subway (Seuil, 2007)
Protogaea, Leibniz, (first edition in English) translation of the Latin edition and preface,
with A. Wakefield, Chicago, (The University of Chicago Press, 2008), repr. paperback
2010
Science, debauchery and secrecy at the dawn of the Enlightenment. The transmutation
of Telliamed, (Paris, PUF, March 2011).
The Method of Zadig. The Trace, the fossil evidence, (Paris, ed. Du Seuil 2011)