A French partisan during the time of the German occupation who never descended into a prejudiced anti-Germanism, an ex-Communist who has provided a great analysis of Stalinism in his book “Autocriticism”, the author of studies on the most varied of topics, from “Germany Year Zero” to the image of the death of the modern world – Morin has created the outlines of a sociology of the present, basing itself above all on the concept of complexity.  A great Europeanist and supporter of an open society, an ethnologist of the small community, he has struggled to blend the story of the cosmos with that of biology and humankind in his many volumes entitled “The Method”.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie will present the prize.