French professor under probe for allegedly awarding himself 'fake prize'

A strange act caught everyone's attention after a French academician was under investigation for inventing a Nobel-style prize for philology in order that he could then go on to win it.

Florent Montaclair, from Besançon in eastern France, was decorated with the Gold Medal of Philology in 2016 at a ceremony held at the National Assembly in Paris, attended by ministers and Nobel laureates.

But the prize was a fiction, as was the body that supposedly awarded it, the International Society of Philology—both apparently dreamed up by Montaclair to burnish his academic credentials.

Philology is the study of language through texts.

Investigators in Besançon are now looking into the affair to see if any laws were broken, while the university where Montaclair taught for 20 years has suspended him indefinitely.

"It's such an unlikely tale; it could be out of a film," said Paul-Edouard Lallois, the prosecutor in charge of the inquiry.

According to Lallois, Montaclair began his invention in 2015, around the time a Besançon newspaper carried a story headlined "Local man on shortlist for Nobel."

The report said that Montaclair was down to the last five for the prestigious international award.

According to Le Monde newspaper, when police came to search his house in February this year, Montaclair said to them, "I suppose it's about the medal," and he told them he had ordered it from a jeweler a short time before the Paris ceremony at a cost of €250 (£215).

"It's not a con. It's an attempt to set up a new distinction in the world of academia—an attempt that failed," he is reported as saying.

The prosecutor's office needs now to decide whether inventing the honors artificially boosted Montaclair's career.

If not, it may be difficult to prove that he did anything criminal.

When Montaclair defended himself, he said making up a worthless award is not in itself against the law, and it was local media who had described it as a Nobel.