Jean-Marie Luton passed away on 16 April 2020 at the age of 77. He was ESA’s fourth Director General, serving from 1990 to 1997. In that capacity, he was fully involved in the setting-up of ISSI. He was born on 4 August 1942, in Chamalières, near Clermont-Ferrand, France. After graduating in engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1961, he joined the aeronomy department of the French national research institute, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Here he worked in geophysics research and on an experiment for the NASA OGO-6 satellite, launched in June 1969 and designed to study the various interrelationships between, and latitudinal distributions of, high-altitude atmospheric parameters during a period of increased solar activity.