Born in 1947, is a French social scientist with food and nutrition as his central area of research and a strong interdisciplinary bias. A Senior Investigator Emeritus with CNRS, the French National Science Center, he is a founder and former director of the Institute for Contemporary Anthropology in Paris. He received a PhD in sociology under the tutorship of the noted French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin.

A member of his team at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, he collaborated on Morin’s now classic work « La rumeur d’Orléans » (1970), participated in or led various larger scale sociological studies, e.g. on the use of and belief in astrology in contemporary societies (La croyance astrologique moderne, 1981); on urban-industrial planning and development and the emergence of the ecological movement (1972-1976).

As early as the 1970s, Fischler realised that food had been neglected and understudied by the social sciences. He set about developing a unifying "fundamental anthropology" approach, i.e. research that attempted to integrate both the unity and diversity of the human relationship with food, the social and cultural as well as the biological dimensions. He developed cross-disciplinary approaches to food cultures and their evolution, to eating behaviour, to medical vs lay perceptions of the relation of food and health and to the perception of risks associated with food. After his 1990 book « L’Homnivore », a synthesis on food and nutrition trying to bring together knowledge and questions from both the social and other sciences (then a first, still in print and, according to its Wikipedia entry, « a classic »), Fischler developed cross-cultural comparative studies on collective views of food and health in European and Western countries. Results showed considerable differences in eating patterns and attitudes, matching significant variation in prevalence of non-communicable diseases and obesity. Fischler also contributed to the field of well being and happiness, in collaboration with Daniel Kahneman and his team, again in a cross-national comparative perspective. His recent and current focus is on sustainable food systems and on the anthropology of commensality (sharing food, eating together – or not) and on a multi-country comparative project on what is perceived as traditional or modern in food across cultures. Fischler also published, among other works, a book on wine (Du Vin) and edited « Selective Eating: The Rise, Meaning and Sense of « Personal Dietary Requirements » ». He sat on various national and European level committees and boards, including the French National Program for Nutrition and Health (PNNS), the European Food Safety Agency and the board of its French counterpart.