No Ivory Tower

The answer to our question, then, is clear. What the French people honoured in Langevin was not the modern magician, the creator of complicated mathematical formulae, but the man who was a living example of the unity between scientist and the common people, whose whole life was a denial of the academic seclusion observed so rigorously and so disastrously by too many of his colleagues.

In the speech he made at the burial. Professor Joliot-Curie said that Paul Langevin did not consider science merely a brilliant sport of the mind, but a "powerful means of educating and liberating man, with a view to creating more justice and kindness. Paul Langevin embodied two missions: that of the great scientist and that of the great citizen. He sought to enrich our knowledge of the world, and at the same time to create a world in which justice prevails. One finds in his work the imprint of a universal mind as well as extraordinary clarity and accuracy of judgement. It was these high qualities which enabled him to analyze social problems so profoundly and to adopt towards them the attitude we admire. Langevin did not want to be one of an elite of scientists divorced from practical events. It was as a member of a community of workers that he concerned himself with social problems."