Jean Pouilloux

Professor Jean Pouilloux (born 31 October 1917 in Le Vert (Deux-Sèvres), France; died 23 May 1996 at Pimontin (Rhone)) was a French hellenist archaeologist.[1][2]

He was educated at the École normale supérieure de la rue d’Ulm from 1939 to 1944. He completed his training and made his initial research at the French School of Archaeology in Athens, then was appointed in 1949 to the Faculty of Arts in Lyon. From 1957 to 1985 he was Professor of Greek language, literature and epigraphy at the University of Lyon and the University Lumière Lyon 2. Specialist in archeology and Greek epigraphy, he worked at Delphi, Rhamnus in Attica, the island of Thasos and Cyprus where he founded and directed an archaeological mission. He was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, several French and foreign academies and in 1988, president of the Institute of France.

His teaching has attracted several generations of students but Jean was not only a teacher. In 1959, he founded within the University of Lyon's Faculty of Arts, the Fernand Courby Institute, named after a Hellenist archaeologist who taught in the same faculty between the two wars. In later years, he created a dynamic team around him, officially recognized by the CNRS in the 1960s. In 1964, he obtained permission to excavate a large archaeological site in Cyprus; the ancient city of Salamis.

Jean Pouilloux was a member of the National Council for Scientific Research, the Universities Advisory Committee, National Council of archaeological research, and for years on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Committee on the excavations. For four years he chaired the Centre for Archaeological Research at CNRS in Sophia-Antipolis. The culmination of his activity was the creation in 1975 of the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée where he served as director until 1978. In 1976, he was appointed scientific director of humanities at the CNRS for six years. He was also notable for translation of Jewish-Greek literature in the 1960s, collaborating with Roger Arnaldez to publish works of Philo of Alexandria, of which he personally translated four volumes.