Goéry Delacôte, Légion d'honneur, is a French theoretical physicist and science educator. He has been involved with the direction of science centres in Europe and the United States. He was instrumental in establishing the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, and was head of scientific information and communication at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) for 10 years from 1982. Delacôte founded the Exploradôme in Paris and has held prominent posts at science centres in San Francisco, California and Bristol, England. Biography Delacôte's first name, Goéry, is possibly inspired by the founder of the commune of Épinal. The town is close to Delacôte's birthplace of Anould. Education At an early stage of his schooling, Delacôte skipped two grades. This encouraged his interest in physics, because he "wasn't mature enough to really appreciate the literature and poetry". He said that he became interested in physics because he considered mathematics to be too abstract, and biology to be less scientific discipline. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), with its highly regarded physics laboratories under Pierre Aigrain. He refused to take the compulsory postgraduate teaching exam, in preference to further education and research. There, he gained his PhD in solid-state physics, after finding it difficult to choose between condensed matter and particle/nuclear (the two dominant areas at the time). He chose organic crystals as his research area because of a desire to help less developed nations: by his reasoning, condensed matter physics was the less expensive of the two. Delacôte helped organise a science summer school for Algerian students in 1962. He then undertook his doctoral research at the University of Algiers, in association with the ENS and later taught at Paris Diderot University. In 1969 he returned to the ENS, where he became a professor after completing his doctorate. Science centres Delacôte led a working group on new methods of teaching physical sciences in schools. He was approached to join Maurice Lévy's team in 1979 to help establish what was to become the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie. In doing so, he visited major museums in the United States. His work began as a part-time job, with him eventually becoming chief scientist there. In 1982 he was made director of scientific and technical information of the CNRS, creating the INIST in 1988. His ten-year period there included founding a new national library for research, an