Anne-Marie Lagrange

Anne-Marie Lagrange was born on 12 March 1962 in the Rhône-Alpes region where her father was employed at the French electric utility company, Électricité de France S.A. and a stay-at-home mother.

On the advice of her teacher and the local Rotary Club, she went to Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles (CPGE) after obtaining her Baccalauréat in 1979.

She discovered astrophysics during an optional course given by Jean Audouze and found this discipline fascinating—connecting basic sciences with an exploratory side.

[2] After her studies, Anne-Marie Lagrange did a year of postdoctoral work at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany from 1989 to 1990.

During a mission to Chile, she met Pierre Léna who developed adaptive optics and understands its full potential in the research and study of exoplanets.

In 1990, she joined the Laboratoire d'astrophysique de Grenoble (LAOG) under the direction of Alain Omont and formed a small research group on extrasolar planetary systems.

From 1997 to 2002, she was the scientific manager of the NAOS instrument, the first adaptive optics installed on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory.

[2][5] However, in the 2000s, Lagrange made several observations of the debris disc using adaptive optics coupled with direct imaging using a near-infrared spectrometer mounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

[4][6] In 2019, Lagrange and a worldwide team announced the discovery of the giant planet Beta Pictoris c that was equivalent to 9 Jovian masses.