Professor expelled from university for inventing 'fake Nobel prize' and awarding it to himself

Published on 07/05/2026 - 11:11 GMT+2

This is the communicative of a prof of connection subject who mistook his grandiose dreams for reality. Between an oversized ego and integer stagecraft, this is the communicative of an world hoax that will, for him, beryllium settled successful court.

Florent Montaclair, aged 56, is presently the taxable of an probe opened by the Montbéliard nationalist prosecutor’s bureau (Doubs), concerning respective alleged offences, including forgery, usage of forged documents, fraud and unlawful presumption of title.

The enquiry besides extends to checking parts of his world record, successful peculiar an alleged PhD obtained from an American assemblage whose precise beingness is present being called into question.

A perfectly devised and executed stratagem

To burnish his world aura, helium is said to person acceptable up successful caller years an wholly fictitious organisation, cautiously named truthful arsenic to suggest planetary designation and technological prestige.

Once this organisation had been dreamed up, everything became simple: it announced its "results", and Professor Montaclair’s sanction people appeared among the laureates. Unsurprisingly, helium frankincense recovered himself awarded this prize, which helium had himself helped to specify and bring into being.

Armed with this distinction, presented arsenic ‘international’, the accolade was past woven into his career. It appeared connected his CV and successful his nonrecreational presentations, projecting the representation of a researcher recognised astatine the highest level. This ‘award’ frankincense became a lever of credibility, boosting his visibility and shoring up his presumption successful world circles, portion perchance opening up caller vocation opportunities.

The harder the fall

But successful the integer property of imperishable fact-checking, lying is simply a risky business. It was erstwhile colleagues astatine Marie & Louis Pasteur University of Franche-Comté (source successful French), arsenic good arsenic journalists, sought to verify the origins of this mysterious prize – which nary 1 successful specializer circles astatine the Sorbonne oregon astatine Oxford had ever heard of – that they began to odor a rat.

The probe rapidly brought to airy the implicit lack of immoderate ineligible structure, genuine assemblage oregon funds associated with this prize. The ‘Nobel of philology’ was thing but a chimera.

And arsenic truthful often, specified stories extremity badly, starting with his expulsion from the university. The lecturer "no longer holds immoderate presumption whatsoever wrong the university " wherever helium had been employed for much than 20 years, the institution’s lawman manager of communications said.

A process to measure the facts helium whitethorn beryllium accused of has been launched successful parallel by the Ministry of Education, and could besides effect successful disciplinary measures, including the outright withdrawal of his professorial title.