Born in France in 1930, Michel Odent was Head of the Surgical and Maternity Units of the Pithiviers Public Hospital from 1962 to 1985, and later founded the Primal Health Research Centre in London. In the 1970s, he introduced the concepts of home-like delivery room and birthing pools in hospital maternity wards. He is the author of the first article in the medical literature on the use of birthing pools (Lancet, 1983), as well as the first on the initiation of breastfeeding within one hour of birth. He is the creator of the Primal Health Research Database (www.primalhealthresearch.com) with the purpose of conveying the fact that the most decisive phase of human ecology is the pre- and perinatal ecology.