Mathwar/Personlist/Cavailles Jean
Jean Cavaillés
Jean Cavaillès (* May 15th 1903 in Saint-Maixent, † February 17th 1944), was a French philosopher, specialized in philosophy of science. He took part in the French Resistance within the Libération movement and was shot by the Gestapo on February 17, 1944.
Life
After the outbreaks of World War II, he was mobilized in 1939 as an infantry lieutenant with the 43rd Regiment, and was later attached to the Staff of the 4th Colonial Division. He was honoured for bravery twice, and was captured on June 11, 1940. At the end of July 1940 he escaped from Belgium and fled to Clermont-Ferrand.
At the end of December 1940, he met Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, with whom he created a small group of resistance fighters, known as the "the Last Column". To reach a broader audience, it was decided to create a newspaper, which was to become Libération, the mouthpiece of Libération-Sud and Libération-Nord. Cavaillès took an active part in editing the paper. The first edition appeared in July 1941.
He was arrested by the French police in September 1942. After a failed attempt at escaping to London, he was interned in Montpellier at the Saint-Paul d' Eyjeaux prison camp from where he escaped at the end of December 1942. The book Cavaillès wrote in prison in Montpellier in 1942 was published posthumously in 1946, edited by the epistemologist Georges Canguilhem and the mathematician Charles Ehresmann under the title 'Sur la logique et la theorie de la science' .
Denounced as a public enemy by the Vichy regime, and sought by the police force, he fled clandestinely to London in February 1943. He met General de Gaulle on several occasions.
Back in France on April 15 he was betrayed by one of his officers, he was arrested on August 28, 1943 in Paris with his sister and her brother-in-law. Tortured, imprisoned in Fresnes then in Compiegne, he was transferred to the Citadel from Arras and was shot on February 17, 1944.