Speakers & moderators

MD,  surgical intern, Jean-Louis Étienne is specialized in nutrition, biology of the sport, and physiology of human adaptation to extreme conditions. In 1977-78, he participated in the Whitbread Round the World Race on board Eric Tabarly’s mythical Pen Duick 6.

A mountain buff, he climbed peaks in the Himalayas, Patagonia and Greenland, among others. In 1986, he became the first person to reach the North Pole single-handedly, pulling his sled for 63 days in complete solitude. In 1989-90 he performs the longest ever traverse of the Antarctic continent with dogs, over 7 months, covering nearly 4 000 miles. He later went on to explore the Erebus volcano on Antarctica, wintered in Spitzberg on his polar vessel Antarctica, and drifted on ice over the North Pole on board the Polar Observer.

In April 2010, he made the first cossing of the Arctic Ocean in a roziere balloon. His next project is an exploration of the Southern Ocean on bord of PolarPOD, an international oceanographic station, driven by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (2023-26). Writer, lecturer, tireless defender of the Earth's environment and climate.