Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (French: [ʒɛn]; 24 October

1932 – 18 May 2007) was a French physicist and the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.[2][3][4][5]
Education and early life

He was born in Paris, France, and was home-schooled
to the age of 12. By the age of 13, he had adopted adult
reading habits and was visiting museums.[6] Later, de
Gennes studied at the École Normale Supérieure. After
leaving the École in 1955, he became a research de Gennes in 2006
engineer at the Saclay center of the Commissariat à
Born 24 October 1932
l'Énergie Atomique, working mainly on neutron
Paris, France
scattering and magnetism, with advice from Anatole
Abragam and Jacques Friedel. He defended his Ph.D. Died 18 May 2007 (aged 74)
Orsay, France
in 1957 at the University of Paris.[7][8]
Nationality French
Alma mater École Normale Supérieure
Career and research Paris-Saclay University
Known for Being the founder of soft matter
In 1959, he was a postdoctoral research visitor with
physics
Charles Kittel at the University of California, Berkeley, Landau–de Gennes theory
and then spent 27 months in the French Navy. In 1961, Polymer physics
he was assistant professor in Orsay and soon started Reptation
the Orsay group on superconductors. In 1968, he Liquid crystalline elastomer
switched to studying liquid crystals.[9] Bogoliubov–de Gennes
equation
In 1971, he became professor at the Collège de France,
de Gennes–Alexander theory
and participated in STRASACOL (a joint action of
Caroli–de Gennes–Matricon
Strasbourg, Saclay and Collège de France) on polymer
state
physics. From 1980 on, he became interested in
Fisher–de Gennes scaling
interfacial problems: the dynamics of wetting and
adhesion. Children 7, including Claire Wyart
Awards Fernand Holweck Medal and
He worked on granular materials and on the nature of Prize (1968)
memory objects in the brain.
Bourke Award (1976)
Racah Lecture (1976)
Awards and honours Ampère Prize (1977)

CNRS Gold Medal (1980)
Awarded the Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize in Gay-Lussac–Humboldt Prize
1968. (1983)
ForMemRS (1984)[1]
He was awarded the Harvey Prize, Lorentz Medal and
Fritz London Memorial Lecure
Wolf Prize in 1988 and 1990. In 1991, he received the
(1985)
Nobel Prize in physics. He was then director of the
École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Matteucci Medal (1987)
Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI), a post he Harvey Prize (1988)
held from 1976 until his retirement in 2002. Lorentz Medal (1990)
Wolf Prize (1990)
P.G. de Gennes has also received the F.A. Cotton
Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1991)
American Chemical Society in 1997, the Holweck Onsager Lecture (1997)
Prize from the joint French and British Physical Eringen Medal (1998)
Society; the Ampere Prize, French Academy of
Scientific career
Science; the gold medal from the French CNRS; the
Fields Physics
Matteuci Medal, Italian Academy; the Harvey Prize,
Israel; and polymer awards from both APS and ACS. Soft matter
Superconductivity
He was awarded the above-mentioned Nobel Prize for Institutions ESPCI
discovering that "methods developed for studying Collège de France
order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized
University of Paris XI
to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid
crystals and polymers". Thesis Contribution à l'étude de la
diffusion magnétique des
The Royal Society of Chemistry awards the De Gennes neutrons (1957)
Prize biennially, in his honour.[10] He was elected a Doctoral Francis Perrin
Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in advisor
1984.[1][11] He was awarded A. Cemal Eringen Medal
in 1998.
Personal life
He married Anne-Marie Rouet [12][6] (born in 1933) in June
1954.[13] They remained married until his death and had three
children together: Christian (born 9 December 1954), Dominique
(born 6 May 1956) and Marie-Christine (born 11 January
1958).[13]
He also has four children with physicist Françoise Brochard-Wyart

(born in 1944) who was one of his former doctoral students and
de Gennes in his office at ESPCI
then colleague and co-author.[12] The children are: Claire Wyart
Paris, 1988
(born 16 February 1977),[14] Matthieu Wyart (born 24 May
1978),[15] Olivier Wyart (born 3 August 1984) and Marc de
Gennes (born 16 January 1991).[13]
Professors John Goodby and George Gray noted in an obituary:[16] "Pierre was a man of great charm and
humour, capable of making others believe they, too, were wise. We will remember him as an inspirational
lecturer and teacher, an authority on Shakespeare, an expert skier who attended conference lectures
appropriately attired with skis to hand, and, robed in red, at the Bordeaux liquid crystal conference in
1978, took great delight in being inaugurated as a Vignoble de St Émilion."
In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[17]
On 22 May 2007, his death was made public as official messages and tributes poured in.[6]
Publications
Books
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1966). Superconductivity of metals and alloys. Westview Press.
ISBN 978-0738201016.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Jacques Prost (1993) [1974]. The physics of liquid crystals. Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0198517856.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1979). Scaling concepts in polymer physics. Cornell University
Press. ISBN 978-0801412035.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1990). Introduction to polymer dynamics. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0521388498.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Jacques Badoz (1996). Fragile Objects: Soft Matter, Hard Science,
and the Thrill of Discovery. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1461275282.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1997). Soft Interfaces: The 1994 Dirac Memorial Lecture.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521020350.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1998). Simple Views on Condensed Matter: Expanded Edition.
WSPC. ISBN 978-9810232702.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Françoise Brochard-Wyart, David Quéré (2003). Capillarity and
Wetting Phenomena: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves. Springer. ISBN 978-0387005928.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (2004). Petit Point: A Candid Portrait on the Aberrations of Science.
World Scientific. ISBN 978-9812560117.
References
1. "Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660-2015" (https://web.archive.org/web/20151015185820/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RVVZY00MZNrK2YCTTzVrbTFH2t3RxoAZah128
gQR-NM/pubhtml). London: Royal Society. Archived from the original (https://docs.google.co
m/spreadsheets/d/1RVVZY00MZNrK2YCTTzVrbTFH2t3RxoAZah128gQR-NM/pubhtml) on
15 October 2015.
2. Joanny, Jean-François; Pincus, Philip A. (August 2007). "Obituary: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes"
(https://doi.org/10.1063%2F1.2774111). Physics Today. 60 (8): 71–72.
Bibcode:2007PhT....60h..71J (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007PhT....60h..71J).
doi:10.1063/1.2774111 (https://doi.org/10.1063%2F1.2774111).
3. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/141) on Nobelprize.org
including the Nobel Lecture, 9 December 1991 Soft Matter
4. An Obituary of Gennes in the Hindu.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20070602182102/htt
p://www.hindu.com/2007/05/31/stories/2007053102061100.htm)
5. Ajdari, Armand (July 2007). "Physics. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932-2007)". Science. 317
(5837): 466. doi:10.1126/science.1146688 (https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.1146688).
PMID 17656713 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17656713). S2CID 118920054 (https://ap
i.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:118920054).
6. Plévert, Laurence (2011). Pierre-Gilles de Gennes: A Life in Science. World Scientific
Publishing. doi:10.1142/8182 (https://doi.org/10.1142%2F8182). ISBN 978-981-4355-25-4.
7. Selected bibliography on the College de France website (http://www.college-de-france.fr/def
ault/EN/all/ins_dis/pierregilles_de_gennes.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20101
227073302/http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/ins_dis/pierregilles_de_gennes.ht
m) 2010-12-27 at the Wayback Machine
8. Nature des Objets de mémoire : le cas de l'olfaction (http://www.canalc2.tv/video.asp?idvide
o=5667) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20071017142615/http://www.canalc2.tv/vide
o.asp?idVideo=5667) 2007-10-17 at the Wayback Machine conférence novembre 2006.(in
French)
9. David Dunmur & Tim Sluckin (2011) Soap, Science, and Flat-screen TVs: a history of liquid
crystals, pp 183–8, Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-954940-5
10. "de Gennes Prize" (http://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/Awards/deGennesPrize/Inde
x.asp). Royal Society of Chemistry.
11. Joanny, Jean-François; Cates, Michael (2019). "Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. 24 October 1932
—18 May 2007" (https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frsbm.2018.0033). Biographical Memoirs of
Fellows of the Royal Society. 66: 143–158. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2018.0033 (https://doi.org/10.
1098%2Frsbm.2018.0033). S2CID 127231807 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:12
7231807).
12. Brochard-Wyart, Françoise (July 2007). "Obituary: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932–2007)" (ht
tps://doi.org/10.1038%2F448149a). Nature. 448 (7150): 149. Bibcode:2007Natur.448..149B
(https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007Natur.448..149B). doi:10.1038/448149a (https://doi.
org/10.1038%2F448149a). ISSN 1476-4687 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1476-4687).
S2CID 35082004 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:35082004).
13. "Pierre-Gilles de Gennes" (https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-Gilles_de_Genne
s&oldid=160829992), Wikipédia (in French), 11 July 2019, retrieved 8 August 2019
14. "Spinal Sensory Signalling | Development, Locomotion & Posture, Pathology" (https://wyartl
ab.org/). wyartlab.org. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
15. "Prof. Matthieu Wyart" (https://www.epfl.ch/labs/pcsl/prof-matthieu-wyart/). www.epfl.ch.
Retrieved 18 July 2021.
16. Goodby, John; Gray, George (4 June 2007). "Obituary: Pierre-Gilles de Gennes" (https://ww
w.theguardian.com/science/2007/jun/04/guardianobituaries.obituaries). The Guardian.
ISSN 0261-3077 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0261-3077). Retrieved 8 August 2019.
17. "Notable Signers" (http://www.americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_III/No
table_Signers). Humanism and Its Aspirations. American Humanist Association. Retrieved
1 October 2012.
External links
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/141) on Nobelprize.org
including the Nobel Lecture, 9 December 1991 Soft Matter
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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (French: [ʒɛn]; 24 October

Education and early life

Awards and honours Ampère Prize (1977)

He also has four children with physicist Françoise Brochard-Wyart

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre-Gilles_de_Gennes&oldid=1245493498"

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