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Jacques Émile Blamont (; 13 October 1926 – 13 April 2020) was a French astrophysicist, author and the founder scientific and technical director of CNES (CNES-Centre national d'études spatiales), known to have contributed to the development of Veronique, the first rocket launched by France in 1957. He was an elected fellow of the French Academy of Technologies and a professor emeritus of the Pierre and Marie Curie University (University of Paris VI).
Blamont was a recipient of several national honours such as Commander of the Legion of Honour, the third highest French civilian honour, Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit, the second highest French civilian honour, Commander of the Academic Palms, Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, the highest French civilian honour, President's Silver Medal, Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples and Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.
Blamont died on 13 April 2020 in Châtillon, Hauts-de-Seine, aged 93.
Blamont continued at CNRS for a year more as a research fellow and joined the Aeronomy Service of the institution in 1957 where he became the deputy director in 1958. In 1961, he was promoted as the director, a post he held till 1985. He worked in many capacities during his stay with CNES, as a Scientific and Technical Director (1962–1972), as Top Scientific Advisor (1972–1982) and as an advisor to the President of CNES from 1982. During this period, he served the Pierre and Marie Curie University as a professor without chair from 1957 to 1961, as a full professor from 1962 to 1996 and as a professor emeritus from there on. He also worked as a research director at École Militaire (Joint Defence College).
He was made the first Vikram Sarabhai professor at the Physical Research Laboratory in 1977, a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1985 and a distinguished visiting scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory during 1980–2001. He was a member of International Academy of Astronautics (1969), Indian National Science Academy (1978), National Academy of Sciences, USA (1980), Air and Space Academy (1983), Academia Europaea (1989), Academy of Technology (2000), French Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society(2002). He was also a member of the advisory council of the Planetary Society.
Blamont was credited with the discovery of turbopause in 1959, the interstellar wind in 1970, the hydrogen envelope of comets in 1971 and the polar noctilucent clouds in 1973. He was known to have made the measurement of the temperature of the neutral atmosphere from 100 to 500 km, the dynamic parameters of the Mesopause, and Einstein's general relativity redshift on the Sun for the first time. He was the head of the group which introduced scientific ballooning and Lidar technology for atmospheric probing in Europe. The image compression device developed by Blamont is in use with various space agencies for planetary missions around the Moon, Mars and Titan. He also contributed to the establishment of a launch range, in Kourou, French Guiana.
Blamont, besides writing several articles on science, authored four books, viz. Vénus dévoilée, Voyage autour d'une planète (Venus Unveiled – 1987), Le Chiffre et le Songe, Histoire politique de la découverte (The Digit and the – 1993), Le Lion et le Moucheron, Histoire des Marranes de Toulouse (The Lion and the Midge – 2000) and Introduction au Siècle des Menaces (Introduction to the Age of Menaces – 2004). He also mentored 80 research scholars in their doctoral research.
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