Nous venons d’apprendre avec une immense tristesse le décès de Pierre Capy, survenu le 3 février.
We have just learned with great sadness of the death of Pierre Capy on February 3.
Pierre was a geneticist specializing in Drosophila and genome evolution. His research focused on the molecular genetics of transposable elements, their evolutionary dynamics, and their horizontal transfers. Pierre began his career at Paris-Sud University, where he obtained a doctorate in 1982. He then joined the CNRS as a research fellow. In 1987, he defended his doctoral thesis on the genetic variability of natural Drosophila populations, under the supervision of Jean R. David, before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States in Dan Hartl’s laboratory, where he studied the molecular evolution of transposable elements, a topic on which he founded a research team upon his return to France. He became a professor at Paris-Sud University (Paris-Saclay) in 2001, where he taught evolutionary biology and the genomics of transposable elements.
His scientific legacy is remarkable: he authored over a hundred articles in the leading journals in the field, supervised eleven doctoral students, and was a major player in the rise of transposable element genetics in France. He was also heavily involved in the administration of scientific life at the local and national levels, serving as head of the GDR “transposable elements,” president of section 29 of the CNRS national committee, president of the biology department at the university, and director of the SDSV doctoral school. He was also director of the LEGS laboratory (now EGCE) and one of the founders in 2016 of the Institute for Diversity, Ecology, and Evolution of Life (IDEEV).
