Professor Lucien Laubier in 2006, during an interview.
Lucien Laubier was born on 22 September 1936 at Lille (département Nord, France). At that time, his father was head of the Lycée de la ville. His mother was a former student of the École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles of Sèvres near Paris. The sexes were not only strictly separated in the French ‘Grandes écoles’ of that time, but also in the highschools where Lucien's parents were teaching.
To me, Lucien seemed always very reserved about his childhood, a peculiarity which he kept also regarding himself and his relatives during his whole life. After getting his Licence des Sciences Naturelles at what was at that time the ‘Sorbonne’ in Paris, he obtained a position as Assistant des Facultés at the Laboratoire Arago in Banyuls-sur-Mer, the laboratory of marine biology of the university in Paris. From the beginning he showed a strong interest in polychaetes and, as Professor Delamare-Debouteville, the future director of the Laboratoire Arago, told me two years later, he insisted all the time that the Faune de France was too imprecise for what he was finding. This was rather original, even revolutionary. Having arrived in Marseille in 1957, I did not wait to contact him. A certain rivalry existed at that time between the Laboratoire Arago and the Station Marine d'Endoume, tolerated or even supported by the respective directors of these institutions, the Professors P. Drach and J.M. Pérès, who were best friends. In my Thèse des Sciences Naturelles presented in 1964, I listed a higher number of polychaetes new to the Mediterranean than Lucien had found at that time. In 1966, Laubier presented a Thèse de Doctorat des-Sciences on ‘Le Coralligène des Albères’, which was sensational because of the subject, the methods used and the results. Of course, our two respective bosses were members of the jury. In fact, our collaboration started more or less at this time, although I moved away for the troubled waters of ports and sewage pipes. It took 38 years before we became co-authors on a paper, a period of time which astonishes me still today!
After his PhD thesis, Lucien, who had all the prerequisites to become a famous zoologist, concentrated even more on the systematics of polychaetes. He took several students who, under his guidance, became rather skilled, but unfortunately too few continued in this field. We can easily imagine Lucien taking the hierarchical steps in the French university system, until in 1969 he left Banyuls and was involved in the creation of the Centre d'Océanographie de Bretagne. This centre, established by the Centre National d'Exploitation des Océans (CNEXO), fused in 1984 with the old Institut Scientifique et Technique des Pêches Maritimes (ISTPM) to become the Institut Français pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER). IFREMER cannot be ignored, since it was due to Lucien's personal effort and with the help of our colleague, D. Desbruyères, that it brought to science one of the most remarkable contributions regarding polychaetes, namely those of the hydrothermal vents. At that time, IFREMER was able to explore, very often in collaboration with our colleagues from the US or Japan, the enormous scientific potential of this habitat which revolutionized our knowledge about the bathyal and abyssal zones.
Of course, Lucien was not only the first to describe polychaetes at the CNEXO and later at IFREMER. In 1984, with only modest aid of the CNRS but with the enthusiastic support of many scientists within this institution, he created the research group ‘Ecoprophyse’, which contributed so efficiently to our knowledge of the so particular deep habitats. However, this did not prevent the leading authorities of the French research to judge wrongly in 1995 that the results were sufficiently important and that it was no longer necessary to support this group of French and foreign scientists. Some of my colleagues of the Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, of which Lucien became director, in part due to their strong support, have still not accepted this brutal and inconsequent funeral.
Naturally, at IFREMER Lucien did not only work on polychaetes. There have been a number of projects related to applied ecology, such as the famous ‘black tides’ or the potential development of aquaculture at sea, sometimes in collaboration with his wife, Dr Laubier-Bonnichon, scientist at the CNRS. Let us also not forget that he participated in many deep dives in the world's oceans on board of most of the scientific submersibles.
Lucien Laubier has been a very productive author. His scientific work comprises not only more than 350 publications on the entire sciences relevant to marine biology, but also numerous reports, publications and books for the public, and articles in magazines and newspapers. In particular, he was co-editor of the ‘Actes de la 4e International Polychaete Conference à Angers’ in 1992.
All along his career he accumulated the most prestigious positions. From 1976 to 1992 he held the most important offices within CNEXO and later at IFREMER. We can imagine that since he did not belong to the famous ‘Grands Corps de l’État’ – offspring of the no less famous ‘Grandes Écoles’, which are a particularity of the upper administration in France – he could not become the director general of IFREMER.
Nevertheless, he was not spared the highest responsibilities. He became scientific counsellor of the French representation at the European Union, a position which he left in 1996 to become professor of oceanology at the Université de la Méditerranée (Marseille II) and director of the Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, a return to the alma mater which he had left in 1969. This ‘capitulation’ was at that time very much deplored by the scientific community. I myself ‘blamed’ him several times for this. He contented himself in asking me if I seriously thought that he would have achieved all these important things if he had not realigned himself from time to time. I must admit I did not completely agree with him. By the way, I would like to remind you here that, at the beginning of the 1980s, some time before his retirement, Professor Pérès had asked him in vain to continue his work as head of the Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille. At the end of his term as director of this institution, Lucien fought with conviction against the idea to close down the more than centenary Station marine d'Endoume. He had travelled and collaborated enough all over the world to appreciate the irreplaceable role of marine stations located so close to the sea in the development of marine biology at its broadest sense. At first glance, this local fight had brought him to oppose himself at national level and against the president of his own university. Finally, this is the reason why he was not attributed the title of Professeur Émérite at his retirement!
This was maybe an unexpected consequence due to his personality and his sometimes intriguing character. These aspects of his personality led him to several disillusions. He never held a position as Professeur au Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris, nor that of the Directeur du Musée Océanographique de Monaco, which he always aspired to and which everybody anticipated, although he was Directeur de l'Institut Océnographique de Paris, Fondation Prince Albert 1er de Monaco. We can ask ourselves if this is not the reason why he never took the responsibility to realize the Faune des Polychètes de Méditerranée, which many of us deeply regret.
Nevertheless, Lucien Laubier was given a number of official honours by his country which only few members of French universities can take pride in. He was member of the Académie des Sciences, des Technologies et de Marine in France, of the Accademia Internazionale di Scienze e Tecniche subaquae in Italy, and of the Société Royale des Sciences de Liège in Belgium. He was Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur et Commandeur du Mérite National, an unchallengeable testimony that France recognized his eminent role in the development of oceanography on national and international level. In fact, he always tried to represent as well as possible not only his country, but also in general the fields of oceanography and marine biology in all the meetings and international conferences in which he participated.
Finally, I would like to remember here two testimonies which are certainly unknown to our community.
Denise Bellan-Santini (an amphipodologist) was a member of the Commission ‘Océanographie et Physique de l'Atmosphère’ of the CNRS together with Lucien Laubier for several years. She was always very impressed by the quality of his oral or written contributions and finally she considered him the most capable person to prepare a report or to plan future proposals.
About two weeks before he died on 15 June 2008, Lucien, who worked until his last breath, had come to the Station marine d'Endoume, which he liked so much, to participate in an event. We were talking about sponges, crustaceans, annelids, coralligène and hydrothermal vents, the saga in which a number of us were involved more or less deeply. We made an appointment for a future meeting, same locality .... Unfortunately this occurred somewhere else, although still in Marseille. This last encounter was concluded by some flowers thrown to the sea by his old colleagues and collaborators in front of the Laboratoire which he had directed, a sea which welcomed his ashes some days later, still in the Mediterranean.
Gérard Bellan
Directeur de recherche Émérite au CNRS,
Station marine d'Endoume
Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille
Acknowledgement
The original French version of this obituary was kindly translated in English by Ruth Barnich (Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, Germany), who is acknowledged here.