Laure Gatet

Laure Gatet (19 July 1913 – 25 February 1943) was a French pharmacist, biochemist, and a spy for the French Resistance during World War II.

Gatet was born on 19 July 1913 in Boussac-Bourg, France.

After attending several schools in the Southwest of France, including Périgueux and Bordeaux, Gatet finished her pharmacy studies before moving to biochemical research.

During the German occupation, she engaged in the resistance network, the Brotherhood of Our Lady, as a liaison to Free France.

She mainly performed actions of propaganda and information exchanges between France and its neighboring countries.

Laure Constance Pierrette Gatet was born in Boussac-Bourg in Creuse, France on 19 July 1913.

Her family promoted education and her mother and aunt attended a girls' high school and earned their high school diploma and certificate of competency.

Her father was a teacher, inspector and director of training schools.

Gatet was brilliant in her primary studies.

She was first educated in a primary school for girls in La Villeneuve from 1920 to 1924 and then at the school of Boussac-Ville in 1925.

In April 1925, she joined the young girls college in Aurillac, Cantal.

Several awards were given to her during her school career.

In February 1926, for example, with the results of her graduation certificate, she won a bicycle.

Gatet was one of the most awarded school students and was cited many times on the honor roll.

She received the Disciplinary Board congratulations for impeccable behavior.

When she obtained her high school diploma, she also received the 1st prize for outstanding results in mathematics and English.

She also excelled in literature, physics, chemistry, history and geography, Spanish, Latin, and visual arts.

On 11 July 1930, Gatet passed the series A and B of her first tests for her baccalaureate at the University of Bordeaux.

Her tests were marked "good enough" and as a result she passed.

In April 1931, she was elected president of the "Horizon", a cooperative founded to "strengthen links among students" and organize various cultural clubs.

Gatet decided to study to be a pharmacist, which was the most common science study in baccalaureate at that time.

She began her training with a mandatory one-year internship, from July 1931 to October 1932, with Mr. Pasquet, owner of the central pharmacy in town hall square in Périgueux.

In the absence of employment, Laure Gatet was supported financially by her family from 1931 to 1938.

She obtained her mineralogy certificate in June 1935, biological chemistry in June 1936 and botany in June 1938.

Following the internship, Gatet resumed her studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Bordeaux, where she received her diploma as a pharmacist in 1936.

At the same time, she started preparing for degree in Natural Sciences at the Faculty of Science.

She found that she was not attracted to profession of pharmacist dispensary, so she finally decided to move towards biochemistry, and at the end of 1936, she was accepted at the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry of Professor Louis Genevois, in the Faculty of Science.

While there, she devoted herself to her thesis and collaborated in scientific articles with different colleagues, in particular Pierre Cayrol, a specialist in yeast and a former doctoral student in the same laboratory.

Gatet's thesis dealt with the maturation of grapes over time.

The subject was of particular interest to Gatet, whose paternal grandfather was a winemaker.

Based on three types of white and red grapes, collected between 1936 and 1938, Gatet developed many preparations, mixtures and methods to carry out this study over the next two years.

During the academic year 1938–1939, the Schutzenberger Foundation offered her a scholarship of 10,000 francs for one year.

Gatet was then subsidized by the National Fund for Scientific Research (CNRS), which granted her a half-scholarship of 12,500 francs.

She also won many other scholarships.

In Bordeaux, before the Second World War, Gatet met with a group of Catholics led by Jesuit Father Antoine Dieuzayde at the foyer Henri Bazire.

Many of them worked at a Catholic summer camp that he founded near Barèges, which was also organized to support refugees from the Spanish Civil War.

She defended her thesis on 23 February 1940.

This quality work is also the subject of a publication in the journal Annals of Physiology and Biological Physical Chemistry.

Spotted by the German police, she was arrested on the evening of 10 June 1942 and detained in several prisons before being transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp where she was murdered.

Furthermore, the International Office of Wine awarded her work on 12 June 1946 (after her death) for a price of 5,000 francs.