Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932-2007)

Awarded the 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 polymers.”

French theoretical physicist. de Gennes was born in Paris on October 24, 1932. He was educated at the Ecole Normale, completing his Ph.D. there. He was appointed Professor at the University of Paris in 1961. Since 1971 he had served as Professor at the College de France from 1976 as Director of the College of Physics Chemistry, Paris. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, USA. de Gennes died in Orsay, France on May 18, 2007.