AN ADVENTUROUS PHYSICIST.

The article profiles Jérôme Chave in Paris, France. He belongs to a family with no particular interst in nature. He obtain his postdoctoral diploma in mathematics and physics from the École Centrale where he pursued a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) on the statistical properties of complex systems at the French Atomic Energy Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics in Saclay near Paris. During his postdoctoral studies, he met some ecologists investigating paleo-environments in Africa and South America that caught his interest. Such encounter aroused his interest about the tropical forest and before he knew it, he was walking in a pristine rainforest in French Guiana designing a model of tree population dynamics.