Background and education to baccalaurǎt in June 1940. Anti-semitism and move to Grenoble, studies there under Fortrat; wartime difficulties. Passage through Ecole Normale Supřieure and comments on French educational hierarchy. Contacts with Bernard Lyot, Evry Schatzman, Marcel Minnaert; first steps in astrophysics, work on nuclear structure. Use of Bengt Strm̲gren's method in thesis on model non-gray atmospheres, 1951. Social climate of astrophysics in Holland, Copenhagen, Boulder, CO (where visited with Walter O. Roberts, Richard N. Thomas) and Paris. At Clermont-Ferrand, 1952-1955. Work on non-local thermodynamic equilibrium models, 1957. Director of Nice Observatory, situation there ca. 1962; problems of funding and organization in France. Move to Collg̈e de France. Work on interstellar dust and cosmology since 1961; Paris colloquium on redshifts, 1976; politics of nonconventional cosmologies. Also prominently mentioned are: Anatole Abragam, M. Brelot, Fayet, Alfred Kastler, Andr ̌Lallemand, Donald Howard Menzel, Henri Mineur, Louis Něl; and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France).