Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber

Jean-Jacques Schreiber (his birth name) was born in Paris, the eldest son of Émile Servan-Schreiber, journalist, who founded the financial newspaper Les Échos, and Denise Brésard. Three of his siblings are Brigitte Gros, former senator of Yvelines and mayor of Meulan, Christiane Collange, journalist, Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, journalist.

The Schreiber family is a Jewish family.

Enjoying the full attention of his mother, JJSS was a highly gifted and hard-working child. He studied at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly and the Lycée de Grenoble, then returned to Paris. Beginning in adolescence, he accompanied his father to meetings with highly placed people such as Raoul Dautry, a cabinet-level officer under both Vichy and liberated France. Having been accepted by the École polytechnique, France's top engineering school in 1943, he joined Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces with his father and went to Alabama for training as a fighter pilot; however, he never entered combat.

After the liberation, he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1947, but never worked as an engineer. That same year, he married journalist and author Madeleine Chapsal. Fascinated by science and politics, Servan-Schreiber now discovered a taste for writing and journalism. The brilliant 25-year-old was hired to write for the recently founded daily newspaper Le Monde by its founder, Hubert Beuve-Méry, as a foreign affairs editorialist. His deep acquaintance with the United States led him to specialize in the Cold War.