Serge Moscovici (June 14, 1925 in Brăila, Romania as Srul Herş Moscovici – November 15, 2014 in Paris) was a Romanian-born French social psychologist, director of the Laboratoire Européen de Psychologie Sociale ("European Laboratory of Social Psychology"), which he co-founded in 1974 at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris. He was a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and Officer of the Légion d'honneur, as well as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Moscovici's son, Pierre Moscovici, was European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs. Biography Born in Brăila to parents who were grain merchants, His uncle was Ilie Moscovici, a leading Romanian socialist. Moscovici frequently relocated, together with his father, spending time in Cahul, Galaţi, and Bucharest. (Later he would indicate that his stay in Basarabia had contributed to his image of a homeland.) From an early age Moscovici suffered the effects of anti-semitic discrimination: in 1938, he was expelled from a Bucharest high school on the basis of newly-issued anti-semitic legislation. In later years he commented on the impact of the Iron Guard, and expressed criticism for intellectuals associated with it (Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade). Moscovici trained as a mechanic at the Bucharest vocational school Ciocanul. Faced with an ideological choice between Zionism and communism, he opted for the latter, and, in 1939, joined the then-illegal Romanian Communist Party, being introduced by a clandestine activist whom he knew by the pseudonym Kappa. During World War II Moscovici witnessed the Iron Guard-instigated Bucharest Pogrom in January 1941. Later the Ion Antonescu régime interned him in a forced-labor camp, where, together with other persons of his age, he worked on construction teams until freed by the Soviet Red Army in 1944. During those years he taught himself French and educated himself by reading philosophical works (including those of Baruch Spinoza and René Descartes). Subsequently, Moscovici travelled extensively, notably visiting Palestine, Germany and Austria. During the late stages of World War II he met Isidore Isou, the founder of lettrism, with whom he founded the artistic and literary review Da towards the end of 1944 (Da was quickly censored). Refusing promotion on the basis of political affiliation at a time when the Communist Party participated in Romania's governments, he became instead a welder in the large Bucharest factory owned by Nicolae