Matthieu Ricard, has a Phd in molecular genetics and was one of Frances most promising scientists. But then he went to the Himalaya and became a Buddhist monk. After a long time he met his father again and had a wonderful dialogue with him, which has been published: the Monk the Philosopher (also available in Romanian). His father is an important french philosopher Jean-François Revel.
The book is great, because it is easy to understand the Buddhist ideas he explains, and because it is a good example of how two people from completely different paradigms can communicate (which is why Dumitru Bortun recommended it at school).

Here is a Ted.com talk by Matthieu Ricard. He combines cognitive psychology with Buddhist ideas on happyness. ted talk