TITLE: Biographic Data/Stories about André Néron
QUESTION [26 upvotes]: Tomorrow, April 6, 2010, André Néron will have been dead for 25 years.
In spite of the weight of his work on abelian varieties, I've only been able to ascertain the following information:

His birth and death dates (born November 30, 1922)
In 1943 he graduated from the École Normale. He got his doctorate in 1951 and his advisor was Châtelet (though not at any particular school, just somewhere in Paris according to German Wikipedia) and his only student was Colliot-Thélène at Orsay (shared with Swinnerton-Dyer)
He was employed at Poitiers. It also seems that in 1953 when he was inducted into the Société Mathématique de France he was listed as being at Orsay. In years 59-60 he was at the IAS and in 1954 he was an invited speaker at the ICM in Amsterdam.

That's pretty much what I found. And all that does is hint that there's a really fantastic story in there!
What happened during the war?
How did he get back to mathematics?
Who else did he work with (not just publish papers with, MathSciNet suggests his only collaborators were Serge Lang and Pierre Samuel)?
Why so few students? Was he difficult to get along with or was it just a sign of the times?
Why did he die at age 62?
If you have any data or stories about him, please leave them here, one answer per.

REPLY [11 votes]: It seems that Colliot-Thélène was asked this question three times: by me, by Olivier, and by Kevin Buzzard.  Here is the reply that he gave to Kevin and forwarded to me:

Le patron d'André Néron était Albert Châtelet.
Néron eut un autre étudiant en thèse, Gérard Ligozat,
  qui après plusieurs travaux sur les courbes modulaires
   quitta le département de mathématiques.
André Néron parlait le langage de la géométrie algébrique
  de Weil à une époque où l'école de Grothendieck était devenu
  dominante. Les jeunes fringants allaient naturellement voir
  du côté des schémas.
La notion de patron et d'élève dans les années 1970
  en France était souple. Après une excellente scolarité,
  on obtenait un poste quasi-permanent soit à l'Université
  soit au CNRS sans avoir publié une ligne dans une revue.
  Ensuite on faisait une thèse si on en avait envie. Voir
  son patron une fois par an était souvent suffisant.
Et le système, sur la durée, a marché aussi bien
  que dans notre époque de publish ou perish.
André Néron mourut d'un cancer en 1985.

Kevin explicitly gave Colliot-Thélène the option of responding in French, which seems appropriate given the subject matter.  

English translation by François G. Dorais:

André Néron's advisor was Albert Châtelet.
Néron had one more thesis student, Gérard Ligozat, who left the Department of Mathematics after much work on modular curves.
André Néron spoke the language of Algebraic Geometry in the style of Weil at a time when the Grothendieck school had become dominant. The dashing youth naturally leaned toward [Grothendieck's] schemes.
The notion of advisor and student was flexible in France during the 1970's. After excellent scholarly work, one could obtain a quasi-permanent job either at the University or at the CNRS, without having published a single line in a journal. Then, if desired, one could do a thesis. Seeing one's advisor once per year was often enough.
And this system, while it lasted, worked just as well as the publish or perish [system] of our times.
André Néron died of cancer in 1985.

(I took a few very minor liberties for readability, but the translation is mostly literal.)