MARCEL LOUIS J. BARRÉRE

1920–1996

BY STANFORD S. PENNER

AFTER A DISTINGUISHED CAREER AS A RESEARCHER, teacher, and administrator, Marcel Barrére died of a heart attack at his vacation residence in Saint Tropez, France, on August 25, 1996, in the company of his lifelong companion, scientific collaborator, and spouse, Simone. He is also survived by two grandsons for whom Marcel and Simone had provided a home since the untimely death of their only daughter, Hélène, about five years ago.

Marcel was born on August 19, 1920, at Saint-Lys, France. He obtained his first degree from the Université de Toulouse in 1942 and his doctorate at the Centre Supérieure de Mécanique de Paris in 1951. He began his professional career soon after the end of World War II at the Office National d'E'tudes et de Recherché Aéronautique (ONERA), (later Aérospatiales) serving successively as research engineer (1944 to 1954), head of a research group (1958 to 1970), chief of the Chemical Propulsion Division (1958 to 1970), coordinator for propulsion systems (1970 to 1972), head of the Energetics Department (1972 to 1979), director of research (1979 to 1985), and subsequently as senior adviser until the time of his death. He was a frequent and widely acclaimed teacher during his periodic services as professor lecturing on combustion and rocket propulsion at the École Nationale Superieure de l'Aéronautique (1958 to 1970), on the same topic renamed (by Theodore von Kármán) aerothermochemistry at the École Nationale des Mines de Paris