Pierre-Gilles of Genoa , born the October 24th 1932 with Paris and dead the May 18th 2007 with Orsay, is a Physicien French.
The royal Académie of sciences of Sweden decreed the to him Nobel Prize of physics in 1991 for its work on the polymeric liquid crystals and the . Its contributions generated very many studies raising as well of the Physique and the fundamental physicochemistry as sciences applied.
Its youths
Childhood with the mountain
It is born in Paris from a father Médecin and of a mother Infirmière, her father at the 9 years loses age and passes his childhood to Barcelonnette in the Alp-of-High-Provence following pulmonary problems. His/her mother ensures her education the house until the eleven years age to learn the English. It is over there that it is initiated with science by meeting the physicist of the particles Giuseppe Occhialini. In connection with this meeting, he tells: A friend of my mother had recommended to me to a Professor. I remember to be gone up in a large tower in false Gothic. I found a Mister who looked at, in the darkness, of the ten meters length photographs. It was an Italian physicist of the name of Occhialini. He explained me that the Photo S represented Trajectoire S of particle S.I re-examined it much later. He had completely forgotten this marmouset that he had initiated with the physics of high the énergies.
Years mole
Pierre-Gilles of Genoa profited from a high level formation. He enters to the Lycée Saint-Louis to prepare the entrance examination to the universities. He follows the courses of a preparatory class disappeared today where one teaches, in addition to the Mathématiques and physics, the Biologie. In 1951, it integrates the National university where it meets three physicists of reputation: Yves Rocard, Alfred Kastler and Pierre Aigrain. In 1953, it takes part in the School of summer of theoretical physics of the Houches, which it will remember: The evening, in front of the chimney, we found Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, which came to tell stories They made us well all laugh the young students who we were then were thus confronted, suddenly, with the large founders of contemporary science without regulatory organization as it is the case actuellement. It obtains its aggregation of physics in 1955.
Career
Pierre-Gilles of Genoa leaves the National university of Paris in 1955. He works then as engineer of research to the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (ECA) where he obtains in 1957 his doctorate in sciences thanks to a thesis entitled “Contribution to the study of the magnetic diffusion of the Neutron S”. Between 1959 and 1961, he is field engineer of the ECA, which enables him to make a stay with the the University of California (Berkeley) in the group of Charles Kittel. In 1976, it accepts the additional expenditure of director of the University of industrial physics and chemistry of the town of Paris (ESPCI), which it will occupy until in 2002.
Work
It continues remarkable works on the phenomena of order in complex mediums. The importance of this work will be worth to him to be named Membre of the Academy of Science in 1979 and to be recognized as one of the pioneers of what itself often indicates like the physicochemistry of the soft Matière. In 1980, it receives the Gold medal of CNRS. Its outstanding contributions in very varied fields (Magnétisme, Supraconductivité, Liquid crystals, Polymère S, Mouillage etc) were worth the to him Nobel Prize of physics in 1991, certain members of the royal Academy of sciences of Sweden qualifying it even “Isaac Newton of our time”, compliment which it declines while asserting that Newton had a stature above that of the physicists of its time. This scientist of exception was the first to be attacked problems of order-disorder transition in materials as complex as polymers, the gel, liquid crystals and more recently the granular Matière.
Basic research with the industrial applications
Pierre-Gilles of Genoa hated the barriers which block the search of knowledge. Partisan of the interdisciplinarity, sensitive to the industrial applications (undoubtedly following a bitter failure in the Années 1980 where the team which it directed, advances some in the science of liquid crystals but without Brevet S and contacts with industry, was made exceed by Japanese in the field of the screens with liquid crystals recognize the quality of its expression, its penmanship and its choice of the word right. It also marked by its use exemplary of immense the black boards which occupied of the whole walls of its office - also refusing in Conférence to use a projector and the transparencies prepared in advance.
Its scientific articles are characterized by their concision, since its articles were intended to be examined and published within the shortest possible time. It had indeed as a practice to launch new proposals rather not very detailed, quickly formatted (format of publication known as “ Rapid Notes ” or “ Letters ”), of which it waited until its pars develop them theoretically and test them in experiments. He was recognized by his collaborators for his aptitude “to seize the essence of a phenomenon and to isolate the important effects from them”. A tight study of its writings. He was a large destroyer of the Set language or academic language, refusing to answer the “questions of taupins” (i.e. abstract questions or purely mathematics) in his conferences with the public.
Humanistic, it in particular signed, with other prizes winner of the Nobel Prize, a call asking that a delegation of the Committee of the Rights of the Child of UNO returns visit to a child Tibetan under house arrest since 1995 in China, Gendhun Choekyi Nyima, recognized like 11th Panchen LAMA by the 14th Dalaï Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.
It showed its humor while accepting in 1997 with another Nobel Prize, Georges Charpak, a small role of deliveryman of Pechblende in the film the Palms of Mr. Schutz of Claude Pinoteau.
Distinctions
It received on January 24th, 2007 the Special mention Higher education of the Roberval Prix for the book Gouttes, bubbles, pearls and waves Co-writing with David Quéré and Francoise Brochard-Wyart.
Homage
The technological college of Worthy-the-Baths thus bears its name since 1998 and Pierre-Gilles of Genoa also inaugurated a place as well as a playing field with his name, in Orsay, his town of adoption, on December 9th, 2006.
Promotion 2007 of the European School of Chemistry, Polymers and Materials of Strasbourg (ECPM, ENSI attached to the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg) also bears its name.
Quotations
It is the unknown which attracts me. When I see a hank well tangled up, I think that it would be well to find a discussion thread. I am a naive theorist, at all a " preneur" of brevets. All in all, which I hate more in the Schools, it is the self-satisfaction - Masters, pupils and former students. From it conservatism comes; and this notion absurdity of the " right to vie". As in the Old Testament, the Prophète S turned sour are, in science, an necessary evil.
| Random links: | Jansénisme | General Electric GEnx | Norbert Jacques | Dressmaker with long tail | Águas de Chapecó |