Winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on "order and
disorder in nature." In announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences called de Gennes "the Isaac Newton of our time." He did
outstanding work all his life, first studying magnetism at the Atomic
Energy Center in Saclay, then founding the Orsay Superconductivity
Group, a group of theorists and experimenters who investigated the
properties of superconductors, then turning in the late 1960s to liquid
crystals. His 1974 book, "The Physics of Liquid Crystals," became a
standard work in that field. In the 1970s he went on to work on
polymers and discovered mathematical relationships that were shared by
polymers and the subjects of his earlier research. In the 1980s he
studied gels and the dynamics of the wetting and drying of substances,
and then adhesion science, seeking a superglue strong enough to hold
airplanes together without rivets. De Gennes received many awards for
both his theoretical and experimental work.
