Goéry Delacôte

Goéry Delacôte
Born	Anould
Nationality	French
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure, University of Algiers
Known for	INIST, Exploratorium, Exploradôme, At-Bristol

Goéry Delacôte, Légion d'honneur, is a French theoretical physicist and science educator. He has been involved with the direction of science centres in Europe and the United States. He was instrumental in establishing the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, and was head of scientific information and communication at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) for 10 years from 1982.

Delacôte founded the Exploradôme in Paris and has held prominent posts at science centres in San Francisco, California and Bristol, England.

Delacôte's first name, Goéry, is possibly inspired by the founder of the commune of Épinal. The town is close to Delacôte's birthplace of Anould.

At an early stage of his schooling, Delacôte skipped two grades. This encouraged his interest in physics, because he "wasn't mature enough to really appreciate the literature and poetry". He said that he became interested in physics because he considered mathematics to be too abstract, and biology to be less scientific discipline. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), with its highly regarded physics laboratories under Pierre Aigrain. He refused to take the compulsory postgraduate teaching exam, in preference to further education and research.

There, he gained his PhD in solid-state physics, after finding it difficult to choose between condensed matter and particle/nuclear (the two dominant areas at the time). He chose organic crystals as his research area because of a desire to help less developed nations: by his reasoning, condensed matter physics was the less expensive of the two.

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