Philippe Harzer is one of the pen names of Gaston-Claude Petitjean-Darville, known as Claude Rank (1925–2003), a French novelist born and died in Marseille. He served as a volunteer officer in the Free French Forces during World War II, then launched his publishing career in 1956 at Fleuve Noir with Orages sur les pistes in the Espionnage series. A prolific author of 202 spy novels and 42 detective novels, he won the Palmes d'or for spy fiction in 1963 for Le carnaval des vautours. He wrote under several pen names: Claude Rank, Claude Darville, Philippe de Clausse, Peter Neumann, and Jean G. Roehmer. Bébés lune et vrais satellites (1957) is his sole venture into science popularisation, written in the weeks following the launch of Sputnik.