Tribute to Professor Jean-Jacques Dufaure
We are very sorry to hear that Professor Jean-Jacques Dufaure recently passed away in this 88th year, and was buried on March 19, 2020. His former students and his colleagues wish to convey their most sincere condolences and their affection to his wife and his son Laurent.
A former student of École Normale Supérieure (rue d’Ulm) in a curriculum of classics and history, Jean-Jacques Dufaure was attracted to the geography classes that he followed at the Institut de Géographie of Sorbonne and by the personality of Professor Pierre Birot. He defended a Master’s thesis in geography in 1956 and then passed the agrégation in geography in 1957. Then he did his military service in Algeria, followed by a short experience as high school teacher in Amiens. In October 1961, he settled in Greece for three years as a research assistant, all the while writing his Ph. D thesis, which he defended in 1975 at the University of Paris Sorbonne under the supervision of Pierre Birot under the title « The Relief of the Peloponnese ». After being a teaching assistant at Sorbonne for a few years, he taught at the university of Rouen where he became a senior lecturer in 1975. In 1982 he was appointed full professor at the university of Paris Sorbonne where he remained until he retired in1992.
Vice director of the Laboratory of Physical Geography of Meudon and a founding member of the French Group of Geomorphologists (Groupe Français de Géomorphologie), he always endeavored to engage in the development of geomorphology and the life of its community.
We bear the fond memory of an eminent, humanist scholar, with an extensive knowledge of his field and well beyond, a lover of Greece, Italy and the Mediterranean world, who was also a rigorous, passionate teacher that took particular care of his students, spending a lot of time supervising his doctoral students on the field, always accompanied by his devoted wife, and establishing strong, long-lasting bonds with them and their families.
Eric Fouache, Michel Rasse, Bruno Comentale, Jean-Pierre Peulvast et Christian Giusti