Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

French physicist; won a Nobel Prize for Physics 1991 for studying boundary lines between order and disorder. De Gennes looked at how liquid crystals and polymers behaved; his work provided the foundation for for the use of liquid crystals in LCDs in computers. Drawing on his knowledge of magnetism, he also developed the theory that described polymers, important in the modern use of plastics.

He graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and worked as a research engineer for the French Atomic Energy Commission. He subsequently did his post-doctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley. After spending over two years in the French Navy, his interests kept him in the field of education. In 1961 he became a professor of solid state physics at the University of Paris in Orsay. He later joined the faculty at College de France and later became director of the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles.

He and his wife Anne-Marie had seven children. He died on May 18, 2007 in Orsay, a suburb of Paris, age 74. The cause was not given.