Jérôme Gaillardet

Jérôme Gaillardet is a geochemist, Professor at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He teaches at the Université Paris-Cité and Sciences Po Paris and is a member of the Centre des Politiques de la Terre, an interdisciplinary center which is shared by the IPGP, the Université Paris-Cité and Sciences Po Paris.

Expert in biogeochemical cycles at the Earth’s surface, he conducts research that uses the isotopic abundance of the elementary building blocks of the universe - chemical elements - to trace their routes in the environment, in the processes and transformations that make our planet habitable on all spatial and temporal scales. He introduced the holistic concept of Critical Zone to France in the 2010s and helped set up the French network of critical zone observatories (OZCAR), which he now co-coordinates from a European perspective.

Awarded the CNRS silver medal in 2018, he is the author of more than 150 international scientific publications in fields covering the chemical composition of the world’s major rivers, the analysis of river sediments, the contamination of water by human activities, and the science of the critical zone – taken as the terrestrial film between the bedrocks at depth and the atmosphere, the only habitable and inhabited zone on planet Earth.

He recently published La Terre habitable, ou l’épopée de la zone critique (La Découverte, 2023).

At the Centre des politiques de la Terre, he is involved in developing interdisciplinary initiatives around new representations of the Earth, as a follow up of the pioneering work he has done with the philosopher Bruno Latour and the landscape architect Alexandra Arènes, and working on the frontier concept of habitability. He is also developing cross-disciplinary approaches with artists (theatre, music) to help us reconnect to the Earth we inhabit and on which we depend.