André Langaney is a French geneticist, specialist in evolution and population genetics.

A former student of the École normale supérieure (1963), associate professor of natural sciences and state doctor in human biology (1972), he was director of the biological anthropology laboratory at the Musée de l’Homme, then professor at the University of Geneva.

Part of the general public knows him better through his popular science columns, published first in “Charlie Hebdo” (for a few months), then in “Siné Hebdo” (until the newspaper’s bankruptcy in April 2010) and his sequel, “Siné Mensuel”, on which he collaborated under the pseudonym Dédé-la-Science. He is the author of the sentence:

André Langaney shows that, genetically, the concept of race is unfounded because it supposes an arbitrary classification of men: we can at most speak of the frequency of certain genes in a given geographical area.

However, adds André Langaney, we must not deny the physical and biological diversity of which science has only reinforced perceptible evidence. Quite simply, this concerns individuals more than groups of people, which are impossible to establish scientifically.