Jacques Soustelle was born in Montpellier in 1912 and attained fame both as a scholar and a politician. He made an exhaustive study of the Aztec language, society, art and architecture, rituals and beliefs. Following his retirement from active politics at the time of the first Algerian revolt, he returned to Paris to reassume a position he had held since 1937-Director of the most famous ethnological museum in the world, the Musee de l Homme. He died in 1990.