Francis Albarède is Professor of Geochemistry at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He has held visiting professorships at universities in the USA, Australia and Japan. He has been President of the European Association of Geochemistry, Chief Editor of Earth and Planetary Science Letters and the Journal of Geophysical Research. He has received numerous awards, including the Norman Bowen Award of the American Geophysical Union, the Arthur Holmes Medal of the European Union of Geosciences, and the Goldschmidt Award of the Geochemical Society. He is also author of Introduction to Geochemical Modelling (Cambridge University Press, 1995).