Albert Chatelet

Albert Chatelet (24 October 1883 – 30 June 1960) was a French politician and mathematician. Chatelet was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1905 to 1908, succeeding to the Agregation (a highly selective competitive examination for future high-school teachers) in 1908. After earning a doctorate in 1911 and serving first in the health service, then in a ballistic research unit during the First World War, Chatelet became a lecturer at Ecole centrale de Lille and a professor at Universite de Lille, rising to the rank of Vice-Chancellor by 1924. After thirteen years of chancellorship he was appointed as the Director of Secondary Education by the Ministry of National Education, where he served under Jean Zay until 1940. In 1945 he joined the Faculty of Science at the University of Paris, succeeding Jean Cabannes as its Dean in 1949. After his retirement as Dean in 1954 Chatelet began participating in political movements at the forefront of the downfall of the French Fourth Republic by joining the Rationalist Union in 1955. In 1958 Albert Chatelet was chosen to represent the Union of Democratic Forces as its candidate during the French presidential election. He earned only 8.4% of the vote, losing out to the Union of Democrats for the Republic candidate Charles de Gaulle.

One of his sons was the mathematician Francois Chatelet, who is not to be confused with the French philosopher of the same name.