KEY POINTS:
Everyone knows what a world-renowned French intellectual looks like. There is the older sort, now rare, who has a squint and smokes cigarettes and haunts the cafes of the Paris Left Bank. There is the newer kind, who has flowing hair and an open-necked shirt and haunts television studios.
Wrong and wrong again. The new face of the world-leading French intellectual is a brisk 36-year-old woman with the pleasant but no-nonsense look of a primary school teacher, who climbs mountains in her spare time.
Esther Duflo was recently named one of the 100 most influential thinkers in the world (she came 91st). She begins a season of lectures this week at the College de France, the Everest of French intellectual life.
Duflo is a "development economist"; one of the world's greatest experts - perhaps the greatest - on why development programmes in poor countries often fail and why they sometimes succeed. Her precise field of expertise has existed less than a decade. She is among its inventors.
Why is she attracting such attention? "Partly, I think, because it's so unusual for such a young person, especially a woman, to be asked to lecture at the College de France," Mme Duflo said. in an interview. "I suppose people are asking 'Who is this person? What is all the fuss about?' Partly also, I think the subject is something that intrigues people. Why is it so difficult, despite all the efforts which have been made, to help people to escape from poverty?"
She investigates, in elaborate detail, the practical, small things which can make a difference in trying to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor. For instance, not just "education, education, education" but how to make sure pupils and their teachers turn up at school. (Answer: tiny incentives, such as free meals or uniforms, can transform attendance in poor countries.)
Duflo has, above all, developed and promoted the concept of "scientific" testing of anti-poverty programmes - what works and what doesn't, but also, crucially, why things work and why they don't.
She does her research not so much in university libraries but villages in India, Ghana or Kenya.
Says Duflo: "Some of what we prove may seem obvious but we have to overcome prejudices."
