Jacques Attali - Early Life

Early Life

Jacques Attali was born on November, 1st 1943 in Algiers (Algeria), with his twin brother Bernard Attali, in a Jewish family . His father, Simon Attali, is a self-educated person who achieved success in perfumery (« Bib et Bab » shop) in Algiers. In 1956, two years after the beginning of the Algerian independence war (1954–1962), his father decided to move to Paris, with his family (Jacques was then 13).

Jacques and Bernard studied at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, in the 16th arrondissement, where they met Jean-Louis Bianco and Laurent Fabius. In 1966, Jacques graduated from the École polytechnique (first in the class of 1963). He also graduated from the École des mines, the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration (third in the class of 1970). He also has a doctorate in economics.

In 1968, he met François Mitterrand for the first time, while he was doing an internship at the prefecture of a French department (Nièvre).

He has a passion for music: he plays the piano (he once played for the association Les Restos du cœur), and wrote lyrics for Barbara. He is the author of Bruits, an essay which deals with the economy of music and the importance of music in the evolution of our societies. He directed the Grenoble University orchestra (performing very different pieces, which ranged from a symphony composed by Benda to Bach’s violin concertos, a mass composed by Mozart, Barber’s Adagio and Mendelssohn’s double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra), and co-directed the Lamoureux orchestra with his friend, the geneticist Daniel Cohen, during the gala of Technion university, in Paris.