A graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, Le Tallec holds a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from The University of Texas at Austin (1980), and a thèse d’Etat in applied mathematics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (1981). His full career has been in academics with a strong interest in developing and running multidisciplinary scientific education programmes. He has served as a professor of applied mathematics at Université of Paris Dauphine, Research Director and Group Leader at INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology), a professor of mechanics at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he also was Vice President for Education, holder of the chair André Citroën and head of the Laboratory of Solid Mechanics.

Le Tallec has been a visiting professor in various international universities including Puntifica Universita Catolica de Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Minnesota, University of Colorado at Boulder, Stanford University in the United States, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and University of Wuhan in China. He has directed more than 40 Ph.D. students from 10 different nationalities and authored seven books together with more than eighty refereed papers in international journals. He has been a longtime collaborator with industrial companies such as Michelin, PSA Group or Dassault Aviation and  a scientific advisor at French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

Le Tallec has also served as president of the French Society of Applied and Industrial Mathematics. He was editor of the International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering and is member of the editorial board of Computer and Structures and of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering and AMSES.

 

He received a CISI award in Scientific Computing and the Prize Blaise Pascal of the French Academy of Sciences. Le Tallec is Chevalier des Palmes Académiques, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier de l’Ordre National du Mérite.