After entering the École normale supérieure in 1940, he soon joined the French Resistance. Only after the war did he begin his research in the United States, at Princeton, where he earned his doctorate. A specialist in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, he achieved outstanding results and joined the Bourbaki group, filming some of its meetings. He was also an exceptionally gifted teacher: all his students, first at Clermont-Ferrand and later at the Sorbonne and Orsay, will tell you that he could make extremely subtle theories seem "easy" to his audiences.
During a stay at Harvard in 1969, he discovered what would become environmentalism. In 1970, together with Alexandre Grothendieck and Claude Chevalley, he founded the group Survivre et vivre. But, true scientist that he was, he rejected the dogmatism taking hold there and left in 1973 to join Les Amis de la Terre.
In addition to his mathematics books, Pierre Samuel published three books on environmental issues. The first, Écologie : détente ou cycle infernal (1973), in the 10-18 series, laid the foundations for a reasoned, scientific approach to environmentalism. The other two, published in the Les cahiers de l’écologie series, dealt with nuclear power and the greenhouse effect. He also wrote a book on the history of feminism, Amazones, guerrières et gaillardes.
