Fabienne Casoli

Fabienne Casoli is a French astronomer and academic administrator, the president of the Paris Observatory.

Education and career

Casoli was born in 1959. After study at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles and earning an agrégation in physics, she completed a Ph.D. in astrophysics with the dissertation Nuages moléculaires, formation d'étoiles et structure spirale on molecular clouds and star formation, directed by Françoise Combes at Paris Diderot University.
She became a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and successively the scientific director of the, director of the Institut d'astrophysique spatiale, deputy director and head of science for the CNES. She was elected president of the Paris Observatory for 2020–2025. She became the first woman to head the observatory since its founding in 1667.

Casoli was named a chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite in 2010, and an officier in 2023.

Casoli is an author or editor of books on astronomy including:

A New Vision Of An Old Cluster: Untangling Coma Berenices
The New Worlds: Extrasolar Planets
Planetary Systems: Detection, Formation and Habitability of Extrasolar Planets
The Exoplanets Revolution
''Planets and Life''