Alain Chippaux nous a quitté le 14 mai 2022 à l’âge de 94 ans

Résumé

Alain Chippaux passed away on May 14, 2022 at the age of 94

Born in Paris on February 28, 1928, his youth was marked by the Second World War. At the age of 16, as volunteer fighter in the Resistance, he was wounded by a bullet during an operation on September 21, 1944.

He entered the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon as a student at the École de santé militaire, defending his thesis in 1954, before joining the École d'application du service de santé des troupes coloniales at the Pharo in Marseille.

His first stay in Africa was in Congo Brazzaville, from October 1955 to September 1958, where he supervised operations to combat sleeping sickness.

On his return to France, he passed the competitive examination to become assistant biologist in the naval troops, which opened the door to the "Grand Cours" in microbiology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, from October 1959 to July 1960, which he attended with his wife, Claude Chippaux-Hyppolite, whom he had met at the beginning of their medical studies.

At the end of this course, he was appointed director of the new Pasteur Institute in Bangui (Central African Republic), dedicated mainly to the study of arboviruses, where he worked with his wife (1960-1966).

In 1966, Alain Chippaux passed the competitive examination to become a specialist in tropical microbiology in army hospitals, and was assigned to the Pharo hospital in Marseille until 1971, where he was head of the arbovirus virology and epidemiology laboratory.

In 1971, he became director of the new Institut Pasteur de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan, with virology as its main initial objective. In 1979, he returned to Paris, where he has remained ever since.

Throughout his life, he was involved in numerous associations. He was elected a full member of the Société de pathologie exotique (SPE) in 1966, then a member of the Board of Directors in 1986, and participated in the work of the Editorial Committee of the Bulletin from 1990 until the end of the 2010s. Together with Alain Epelboin, he strengthened and systematized the peer review of manuscripts. He was Secretary General of the SPE from 1995 to 1999 and President from 1999 to 2003.

Alain Chippaux is the author of numerous articles and books on arboviruses, vaccines and vaccination against viral diseases, public health and good laboratory safety practices.

He was Officier de la Légion d'honneur (1987), Officier de l'ordre national du Mérite (1982), holder of the Croix du combattant volontaire de la Résistance, the Médaille d'Outre-Mer (1970), the Médaille d'honneur (argent) du Service de santé des armées (1985) and Chevalier de l'ordre du Mérite centrafricain.

Alain Chippaux is remembered as a man of great ability, rather modest, discreet, well-balanced and always warm-hearted.