Death of Claude Henry

Claude Henry, a world-renowned economist, passed away on April 17, 2025. This is an immense loss for the scientific community, which owes him a debt of gratitude not only for his research and teaching at the Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po and Columbia, but also for his loyalty and devotion to his many friends.
Initially a physicist, he began to wonder about his future. He met Edmond Malinvaud at a dinner party in the late 60s. This dinner was to prove decisive. He began his career in economics by taking courses at ENSAE, and very quickly participated in the revival of the discipline, which in just a few years moved from a moral and legal science to a more quantitative one based on the analysis and interpretation of facts.
It was with this ambition in mind that, in the early 70s, he took charge of the Econometrics Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique. This laboratory became a haven for many university researchers seeking good working conditions on the Montagne Saint Geneviève in Paris. These included Jean Jacques Laffont, the future founder of the Toulouse School of Economics, who would lead other members of the laboratory to follow in his footsteps, including Jacques Cremer, Jean Charles Rochet...
But the Laboratory was not monolithic in its orientation, welcoming researchers such as Robert Ballion (educational sciences), Vincent Renard (land economics), Patrick Lagadec (crisis management), Olivier Godard (environment and precautionary principle)...
Michel Balinski (American economist and winner of the prestigious John von Neumann Theory Prize) took over as head of the laboratory in 1987. Under his impetus and that of Sylvain Sorin, the Laboratory became a training ground of excellence, with prestigious guests from CORE (Louvain la Neuve), the Centre for Interactive Rationality (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Stony Brook University (New York). In 2009, the Laboratory will join CREST, the joint research center of ENSAE and Ecole Polytechnique on the Saclay site.
Alongside his commitment to the Laboratory, Claude also taught in the Economics Department, creating the Public Economics course. He taught this course from 1977 to 1999. With Pierre Picard, he also set up a course on sustainable development. Thanks to his wide-ranging knowledge and uncommon talent for teaching, Claude played a decisive role in shaping the careers of many of his students. Among them were Jean Paul Bouttes, future Chief Economist at EDF, Alain Grandjean, founder of the Carbone 4 Think Tank, Bernard Salanié, now Professor at Columbia University...
Thanks to Claude's support, EDF and the Ecole Polytechnique created the school's first research chair in 2003. The "Sustainable Development" Chair, which is still active in 2025, focuses on integrating respect for the environment into public and private decision-making processes.
Beyond his research work published in the most prestigious journals (Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Review of Economic Studies... see his list of publications on https://ideas.repec.org/f/phe263.html), Claude, through the thirty years he devoted to the Ecole Polytechnique, will have left a strong mark on the institution.
But Claude's career didn't stop at the Ecole Polytechnique, far from it. His exchanges with the climate science community have multiplied over the years, notably with Jean Jouzel, Nicolas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz... With Laurence Tubiana, who was the architect of the Paris Agreement (COP 21, held in 2015), they are the co-authors of Earth at Risk Natural Capital and the Quest for Sustainability, Columbia University Press, 2017.
Claude joined IDDRI (Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales), an institute founded by Laurence Tubiana with Michel Colombier in 2001 at Sciences Po, and created a course on sustainable economics there. He also teaches this course at Columbia University (New York). Passionate about the subject, Claude continued to teach at both institutions until the age of 80. He published several books testifying to his militant commitment (his latest, Pour éviter un crime écologique de masse, Odile Jacob, 2023), as well as a number of editorials in Le Monde (his last was published on October 1, 2023, and is entitled La planification écologique vue par Jean Jouzel, Alain Grandjean et Claude Henry: Loin d'être cohérents, nos dirigeants politiques pratiquent sans complexe l'art du double jeu).
Claude Henry was Director of Research at the CNRS, Professor Emeritus at the Ecole Polytechnique and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales (IDDRI). He was co-editor of the Review of Economic Studies and then of the Journal of Public Economics. His publications focus on: weak interactions between elementary particles; differential equations with discontinuities; option values and the irreversibility effect; decisions under uncertainty; the precautionary principle; the economics of public services and regulation; intellectual property and innovation. From 1997 to 2002, he was a member of the Conseil d'analyse économique, reporting to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. He is a member of Academia Europea(https://www.acadeuro.org/), a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a silver medalist of the CNRS.
What many will remember about Claude is his role as a bridge-builder between academic disciplines (drawing on his dual training and broad cultural background), as well as between the worlds of science, politics and business. His role as a bridge-builder was driven by the management of the commons, by the general interest (his favorite subjects), and always attentive to the best way of involving the youngest members of society.

Jean-Pierre Ponssard
Director, Econometrics Laboratory
1999 - 2009