[1] Alexis Carrel spent most of his career at the Rockefeller Institute in New York and returned to France just before the outbreak of World War II.
Carrel, who had worked previously with Philippe Pétain during the First World War, accepted an offer to establish and lead a foundation for the study of human problems.
[4] It promoted the 16 December 1942 Act which established the prenuptial certificate, which was required before marriage and which sought to insure the good health of the spouses, in particular in regard to sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and "life hygiene".
The institute also established the livret scolaire [fr],[a] which could be used to record students' grades in the French secondary schools, and thus classify and select them according to scholastic performance.
[3] Most members of Carrel's team moved to INED, led by demographist Alfred Sauvy, who coined the expression "Third World".