In tribute to André Adoutte

The objective of this issue was to give an historical panorama of French biological research and the role played by research organizations, in particular the CNRS: a project that proved too ambitious for the size of this issue. Instead a small number of contributions have been assembled here. It is a matter of attempting, more modestly, to define a certain tradition of French biological research, a certain style, and the manner in which this tradition slowed, or alternatively, facilitated the..