Georges, Marquis de Créqui-Montfort de Courtivron

Georges de Créqui-Montfort Marquis de Courtivron was an explorer, anthropologist, diplomat, businessman and sport shooter. His father was an aristocrat and his mother a ballerina at Opera Garnier in Paris.

After graduating in literature and law, in 1903, he was sent by the Ministry of Public Education on a mission to various countries in South America. He was the head of a scientific mission with the aim to explore the Andean highlands. Carrying out important ethnographic and archaeological work, including the discovery of the pre-Inca site of Tastil, he collected a great number of objects constituting the core of the collection of a future museum of Native American archaeology in Paris.

In 1910, de Créqui-Montfort married Helen Agnès Anne de Polignac. He was a member of the board of the Compagnie française de banque et de mines and then of Crédit mobilier français, which had absorbed the former. During World War I, he served as an infantry captain. In 1917, he joined the High Commission of the French Republic in the United States residing in Washington. After the war, he became general delegate of several French missions in the USA and Canada.

De Créqui-Montfort was appointed Knight (1906), Officer (1922) and eventually, in 1953, Commander of the Legion of Honor. During World War I, he was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Croix de guerre with palms. On the scientific level, he was President of the Society of Americanists from 1928-58 and received the gold medal of the Geographical Society in 1910. As a sports shooter he participated in the 1912 and 1924 Olympic Games in pistol and trap shooting.