Yves Coppens was born in France in 1934. He graduated from the University of Rennes and Sorbonne where he studied ancient hominids.
In 1974, Coppens along with two other paleoanthropologists discovered "Lucy" in Ethiopia, which included several hundred pieces of bone fossils representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. Coppens chaired the commission that聽wrote the French Charter for the Environment of 2004, now part of the French Constitution. He also served as an Emeritus Professor at the Coll猫ge聽de France.
Coppen delivered the Beatty Lecture on November 30, 1995, titled 鈥淔rom Africa, the Cradle, to America, the New World: The Prehistory of Man and the Peopling of the Earth鈥�.
Image: Coll猫ge de France, photographer Patrick Imbert
