Thierry J.-L. Courvoisier is an astrophysicist born in 1953 in Geneva. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich in 1980. He worked in ESA’s X-ray astronomy project EXOSAT at the European Space Operations centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany), and on HST at the European Southern Observatory, ESO, in Garching (Germany). He joined the University of Geneva in 1988 where he became full professor in 1999. He is now honorary professor. He developed high energy astrophysics in Geneva and created and led the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC) in charge of processing, archiving, analyzing and distributing worldwide the data from ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL. His research has been dealing mainly with the physics of active galactic nuclei. Thierry Courvoisier has been president of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) 2010-2017.

Thierry Courvoisier was president of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences 2012-2015 and president of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences in January 2013-2015. He is president of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

July 2009 to June 2010 Thierry Courvoisier sailed from the European Arctic regions to South America and back to Europe.

Thierry Courvoisier is the author or co-author of more than 400 scientific papers, of which more than 160 are in the refereed literature, and three books. His papers received more than 6000 citations.