Étienne Klein


Étienne Klein is a French physicist and philosopher of science. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, he holds a DEA in theoretical physics, as well as a Ph.D. in philosophy of science and an accreditation to supervise research (HDR).
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Profile

Étienne Klein is a Research director at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA). He is currently head of the Laboratoire des Recherches sur les Sciences de la Matière, a research laboratory belonging to the CEA and located in Saclay near Paris. He took part in several major projects, such as the adjustment of a method of isotopic separation involving the use of lasers, and the study of a particle accelerator with superconducting cavities. At CERN he was involved in the design of the Large Hadron Collider.
He taught quantum physics and particle physics at Centrale Paris for several years and currently teaches philosophy of science. He is a specialist in the question of time in physics and has written a number of essays on the subject. He is also a member of the Conseil d'analyse de la société, of the conseil scientifique de la Cité des Sciences, of the Conseil de l'Office parlementaire d'évaluation des choix scientifiques et technologiques, of the French Academy of Technologies and of the Conseil d'Orientation de l'Institut Diderot. Every Thursday morning he presents a radio chronicle, Le Monde selon Étienne Klein, as well as La Conversation scientifique every Saturday afternoon, on the French public station France Culture.
Étienne Klein practises mountain-climbing and other endurance sports.

Plagiarism affairs

In December 2016, Science magazine, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reported that Étienne Klein was responsible for plagiarizing the novelist Stefan Zweig and other authors.
In August 2024, French media Arrêt sur images revealed that 88 of the 429 pages of the book adapted from his PhD thesis, L’Unité de la physique, contain plagiarized text by Gerald Holton, Lambros Couloubaritsis and other philosophers.

Chorizo tweet

On July 22, 2022, Klein tweeted a photo that he presented as an image of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. A few days later, he revealed that the photo was actually of a slice of chorizo against a black background. He described his tweet as a "form of amusement" and urged his 92,000 Twitter followers to "be wary of arguments from authority".

Distinctions and awards

Filmography

, co-author with Marc Lachièze-Rey, film directed by Hervé Lièvre, 2001