Trivia

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.

One of his great-grandfathers (paternal grandmother's father) was Portuguese, another great-grandfather (maternal grandmother's father) was English, and one of his great-grandmothers (paternal grandfather's mother) was German.

Son of Robert Joachim Pierre de Gennes (the son of a French nobleman) and wife Marthe Marie Yvonne Morin-Pons.