Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Gennes, Pierre-Gilles de (1932), a French theoretical physicist, improved the understanding of the behavior of substances consisting of large molecules. He won the 1991 Nobel Prize in physics for his work.
His findings shed light on how molecules become more orderly or more disorderly under the influence of such things as temperature, and electric and magnetic fields. He has been called “the Isaac Newton of our time” for his talent in reducing a broad range of complex phenomena to a few simple truths.
The materials de Gennes has worked on include polymers, such as plastics, and liquid crystals, which are most familiar from the displays in calculators and digital watches.
De Gennes studied a wide variety of problems in the field of solid-state physics, also called condensed-matter physics, the physics of solids and liquids. He worked on superconductors - materials that lose all electrical resistance when they are cooled below a certain temperature. Later he studied liquid crystals, which are liquids and therefore able to flow, but whose molecules have a certain degree of order. In certain liquid crystals, the molecules can be lined up by applying electric fields, affecting light passing through them. This principle is the basis of the liquid-crystal display (LCD).
De Gennes was born in Paris and attended the École Normale Supérieure. He worked at the French government's nuclear energy research center at Saclay for several years, obtaining his Ph.D. degree in 1957. After working at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States, and serving in the French navy, he taught at the College de France in Paris and at the University of Paris. In 1976, de Gennes became director of the College of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, also in Paris.
De Gennes has published several books, including Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys (1966) and Introduction to Polymer Dynamics (1990).