Speaker: Pierre-Olivier Methot, Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada, 'Mirko Grmek's investigative pathway'

Trained as a physician and well-versed in Ancient medicine, Croatian-born historian of science Mirko D. Grmek (1924-2000) was also a world reference on French physiologist Claude Bernard, a scholar on 17th and 19th century sciences of life, a leading thinker of the emergence of AIDS, and a commentator on the collapse of Yugoslavia. A member of the Resistance during the war, he directed the first Institute for the History of Medicine in Croatia before establishing himself in Paris where he worked under the guidance of Alexandre Koyre, Fernand Braudel, and Georges Canguihem, prior to becoming professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1973-1989). Despite his scholarly achievements and international recognition - he received the Sarton Medal in 1991 - Grmek, as an intellectual figure, remains little known outside France. Focussing on his theoretical reflections deriving from his historical studies, this paper considers how these have led Grmek into an engagement with contemporary social and political problems, and examines more broadly the cultural and scientific currents that contributed in making him an influential figure in the intellectual history of science and medicine during the second half of the 20th century.