DR JEAN-LOUIS
ÉTIENNE

  • Doctor of Medicine
  • Surgical intern
  • Grand Officer of the National Merit Order
  • Commander of the Legion of Honor
  • Member of the Academy of Technology
  • Gold Medal of the Geography Society
  • Fellow of the American Explorer Club
  • Fellow of the National Geographic Society
  • IUCN Ambassador for the Poles and the Ocean

Jean-Louis ETIENNE a un parcours assez singulier, puisqu’il a débuté par une formation de tourneur-fraiseur avant de faire médecine. Après un internat en chirurgie, une spécialité de nutrition et de biologie du sport, il met ses compétences de médecin au service d’un rêve : explorer, arpenter le monde.

He made his first Atlantic crossings on Father Jaouen’s Bel Espoir for the rehabilitation of drug addicts, then with Alain Colas for an Atlantic record.

As a doctor specialising in sports biology and nutrition, Jean-Louis Etienne has taken part in numerous expeditions to the Himalayas, Greenland and Patagonia as well as crewing with Eric Tabarly for a round-the-world race aboard Pen Duick VI.

In 1986 he became the first man to reach the North Pole solo overland, pulling his own sled for 63 days.

Between July 1989 and March 1990, he was co-leader alongside American Will Steger of the international Transantarctica expedition, which used dog sleds to make the longest overland crossing of Antarctica ever accomplished: 6,300 km.

Jean-Louis Etienne is also a totally committed environmentalist, and between 1990 and 1996 he led a number of education-oriented scientific expeditions to raise public awareness of the Polar regions and to learn more about their impact on the Earth’s climate and life forms. In 1991-92 he travelled in the polar sailing vessel Antarctica to Patagonia, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Then in 1993-94 he led the Erebus expedition and in 1995-96 he wintered at Spitzbergen.

In the spring of 2002, Jean-Louis Etienne undertook Mission Banquise (Sea-Ice Mission), drifting for three months on the sea ice around the North Pole in his Polar Observer capsule in order to carry our research and gather data on global warming.

From December 2004 to April 2005, he led a team of researchers from the Natural History Museum, IRD and CNRS (the National Scientific Research Centre) to carry out a biodiversity inventory and assess the state of the marine environment around the French atoll of Clipperton in the Pacific.

From September 2007 to October 2008, he was Director of the Oceanographic Institute – Foundation Albert I Prince of Monaco.

In April 2010, he made the first crossing of the Arctic Ocean with a balloon rozière.

Its next expedition will be a 2-year mission around Antarctica aboard the POLAR POD, an international oceanographic Station, for the study of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, a major player in the Earth’s climate and an immense reserve of Marine biodiversity still unknown.

"INSPIRERS"

WALTER BONATTI

Italian mountaineer

At fifteen, I dreamed of the mountains. His solo ascents of the Drus and the direct winter climb on the north face of the Matterhorn fascinated me.

LIONEL TERRAY

French mountaineer

“The monotony of the world frightened me; I dreamed of a noble and free existence.” At sixteen, Lionel Terray became my role model.

NATURE

Nature has always been a refuge, a source of peace, inspiration, creativity, and daring.

COLLÈGE TECHNIQUE DE MAZAMET

1959 – 1964

Judged on concrete achievements, vocational training was a path of academic rehabilitation.

DR JEAN-PIERRE GUIBÉ

Surgeon

My mentor revealed to me a passion for surgical technique.

PÈRE MICHEL JAOUEN

Jesuit, sailor, humanist

Beyond appearances, he saw souls battered by life and always reached out to them.

ERIC TABARLY

French navigator

He taught me that one could lead through silence.

BERNARD MOITESSIER

Navigator, writer, environmentalist

I had written on the wall of my student room, “you can’t stop a seagull from taking to the open sea”, an excerpt from The Long Road.

JEAN-HENRI FABRE

1823 – 1915

A scholar of nature, entomologist, naturalist painter, writer and talented educator, he initiated me to express complex phenomena simply.

HANDMADE HOUSES

Book

This book, discovered in 1975 in California: there was no longer any doubt, I would one day build myself a wooden house in the trees.

NICOLAS BOUVIER

Travel writer

I realized that “the nomadic state” had something to teach me. Its carefully chosen sentences guided me in the search for the right word.

CHRISTIAN BOBIN

French poet

“There is a star placed in the sky for each of us, far enough away that our mistakes will never tarnish it.” I confess to often retreating to these celestial paradises that this contemporary poet offers us.

FRIDTJOF NANSEN

Scientist, North Pole explorer, politician, Nobel Peace Prize laureate

His ship, the Fram, inspired me to build Antarctica, now named Tara.

ERNEST SHACKLETON

British explorer of the South Pole

He had the audacity and the lucidity to lead his teammates to the very edge of life without ever losing any of them.

THÉODORE MONOD

Naturalist, pacifist, explorer of the Sahara

“Beyond a certain level of power, man is no longer part of the ecological network.”

JEAN JAURÈS

French politician

“Courage is striving for the ideal while understanding reality.” Speech to high school students in Albi in 1903. Still relevant today.

JEAN-BAPTISTE CHARCOT

Doctor and polar explorer

Despite pressure from his father, a renowned neurologist, he abandoned medicine to pursue his passion: exploring polar regions, particularly aboard the famous Pourquoi Pas?

J.J. CALE

American singer-songwriter and guitarist

For decades and still today, his country blues are always a little boost when the need arises.

HAROUN TAZIEFF

Agronomist, geologist, mining engineer, volcanologist and Russian writer (naturalized Belgian then French)

Aventurier des volcans, j’ai aimé ses audacieux engagements sur le terrain, la liberté de ses coups de gueule, il m’a inspiré l’expédition au volcan Erebus.

PAUL-EMILE VICTOR

French polar explorer, scientist, ethnologist and writer

All those who are still discovering the great polar adventure today owe a thought to PEV. “I would like to come with you, not this time but in a future life.”
On board Antarctica, Brest, 1991

SCRIPPS

Institution of Oceanography – UC San Diego

Understanding and protecting the planet, finding solutions to our most urgent environmental challenges.