Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (French:[ʒɛn]; 24 October 1932 – 18 May 2007) was a French physicist and theNobel Prize laureate inphysics in 1991.[2][3][4][5]
In 1971, he became professor at theCollège de France, and participated in STRASACOL (a joint action ofStrasbourg, Saclay andCollège de France) on polymer physics. From 1980 on, he became interested in interfacial problems: the dynamics of wetting andadhesion.
He worked ongranular materials and on the nature of memory objects in the brain.
He was awarded the above-mentioned Nobel Prize for discovering that "methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers".
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 physicistFrançoise Brochard-Wyart (born in 1944) who was one of his former doctoral students and then colleague and co-author.[12] The children are:Claire Wyart (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]
ProfessorsJohn Goodby andGeorge 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."
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1966).Superconductivity of metals and alloys. Westview Press.ISBN978-0738201016.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes,Jacques Prost (1993) [1974].The physics of liquid crystals. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0198517856.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1979).Scaling concepts in polymer physics. Cornell University Press.ISBN978-0801412035.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1990).Introduction to polymer dynamics. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0521388498.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Jacques Badoz (1996).Fragile Objects: Soft Matter, Hard Science, and the Thrill of Discovery. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1461275282.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1997).Soft Interfaces: The 1994 Dirac Memorial Lecture. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0521020350.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1998).Simple Views on Condensed Matter: Expanded Edition. WSPC.ISBN978-9810232702.
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes,Françoise Brochard-Wyart, David Quéré (2003).Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves. Springer.ISBN978-0387005928.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (2004).Petit Point: A Candid Portrait on the Aberrations of Science. World Scientific.ISBN978-9812560117.
