Background
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was born on October 24, 1932, in Paris, France. He was the son of Robert de Gennes and Yvonne Morin-Pons.
( Drawn from the author’s introductory course at the Univ...)
Drawn from the author’s introductory course at the University of Orsay, Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys is intended to explain the basic knowledge of superconductivity for both experimentalists and theoreticians. These notes begin with an elementary discussion of magnetic properties of Type I and Type II superconductors. The microscopic theory is then built up in the Bogolubov language of self-consistent fields. This text provides the classic, fundamental basis for any work in the field of superconductivity.
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(The aim of this book is to give a unified and critical ac...)
The aim of this book is to give a unified and critical account of the fundamental aspects of liquid crystals. Preference is given to discussing the assumptions made in developing theories and analyzing experimental data rather than to attempting to compile all the latest results. The book has four parts. Part I is quite descriptive in character and gives a general overview of the various liquid crystalline phases. Part II deals with the macroscopic continuum theory of liquid crystals and gives a systematic development of the theory from a tensorial point of view thus emphasizing the relevant symmetries. Part III concentrates on experiments that provide microscopic information on the orientational behaviour of the molecules. Finally Part IV discusses the theory of the various phases and their attendant phase transitions from both a Landau and a molecular-statistical point of view. Simplifying the various models as far as possible, it critically examines the merits of a molecular-statistical approach.
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(This new edition of the classic text incorporates the man...)
This new edition of the classic text incorporates the many advances in knowledge about liquid crystals that have taken place since its initial publication in 1974. Entirely new chapters describe the types and properties of liquid crystals in terms of both recently discovered phases and current insight into the nature of local order and isotropic-to-nematic transition. There is an extensive discussion of the symmetrical, macroscopic, dynamic, and defective properties of smectics and columnar phases, with emphasis on order-of-magnitude considerations, all illustrated with numerous descriptions of experimental arrangements. The final chapter is devoted to phase transitions in smectics, including the celebrated analogy between smectic A and superconductors. This new version's topicality and breadth of coverage will ensure that it remains an indispensable guide for researchers and graduate students in mechanics and engineering, and in chemical, solid state, and statistical physics.
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(The first stage of the physics of long, flexible chains w...)
The first stage of the physics of long, flexible chains was pioneered by eminent scientists such as Debye, Kuhn, Kramers, and Flory, who formulated the basic ideas. In recent years, because of the availability of new experimental and theoretical tools, a second stage of the physics of polymers has evolved. In this book, a noted physicist explains the radical changes that have taken place in this exciting and rapidly developing field.Pierre-Gilles de Gennes points out the three developments that have been essential for recent advances in the study of large-scale conformations and motions of flexible polymers in solutions and melts. They are the advent of neutron-scattering experiments on selectively deuterated molecules; the availability of inelastic scattering of laser light, which allows us to study the cooperative motions of the chains; and the discovery of an important relationship between polymer statistics and critical phenomena, leading to many simple scaling laws.Until now, information relating to these advances has not been readily accessible to physical chemists and polymer scientists because of the difficulties in the new theoretical language that has come into use. Professor de Gennes bridges this gap by presenting scaling concepts in terms that will be understandable to students in chemistry and engineering as well as in physics.
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(The works of the 1991 Nobel prize winner in physics, Pier...)
The works of the 1991 Nobel prize winner in physics, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, have transformed condensed matter physics. Over the last three decades, he has left his indelible mark on an astonishing variety of condensed matter topics - magnets, superconductors, liquid crystals, polymers, interfaces, wetting and adhesions, and chirality. In doing so, he has bridged the gap between solid state physics and physical chemistry, and has forged close links between experimentalists and theoreticians. In awarding him the 1991 Nobel prize for his theoretical studies on liquid crystals and polymers, the Nobel foundation has paid tribute to his undoubted genius in discovering mathematical simplicity and elegance in the most complex and "messy" of systems. His deep insights into these fields have enabled others to exploit liquid crystals in technology and have paved the way for physicists to work on polymers. This book presents a personal selection of the major works of de Gennes. It comes complete with afterthoughts by the author on his main papers, explaining their successes or weaknesses, and the current views on each special problem. This collector's volume contains all the important works of de Gennes which have made a lasting impact on our understanding of condensed matter, and serves as a reference book for all condensed matter physicists and physical chemists. It also bears testimony to the genius of a remarkable man.
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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was born on October 24, 1932, in Paris, France. He was the son of Robert de Gennes and Yvonne Morin-Pons.
P.G. de Gennes got Doctor of Philosophy degree in Ecole Normale Superieure. Also he finished Centre d’Etudes Nucléaires de Saclay with Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1959. He defended his doctor's degree in 1957 at the University of Paris.
De Genes began his caree in 1955 when he became a research scientist at the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires de Saclay.
De Genes' association with academic institutions included his professorship of solid-state physics at the University of Paris, Orsay, for a decade from 1961 to 1971.
That same year he began to hold the post of a professor in the College de France, he served there till 2004. Simultaneously he was a director in Ecole de Physique et Chimie.
His early research was at the areas of magnetism and superconductivity, the disappearance of electrical resistance in a substance, especially at very low temperatures. By the 1960s, de Gennes turned to a neglected subject that had been discovered in the 1920s—liquid crystals. They have been called “nature’s delicate phase of matter” because their molecules can be arranged in many ways, and the arrangements can be easily disturbed by weak magnetic or electrical fields. A familiar use of liquid crystals is in pocket calculators and digital watches.
Another description of liquid crystals is that they are soaplike. In this phase, the molecules flow only in two dimensions and in parallel layers. An industrial interest in this property of liquid crystals has come about with the development of “flat” television screens. By the end of the 1960s, de Gennes had formed the liquid crystal group at Orsay. His team comprised both theoreticians and experimenters. His book, The Physics of Liquid Crystals, was published in 1974 and became the standard work in the field.
De Gennes’s shift into liquid crystals came after he had completed substantial work in the area of super-conductivity. In 1966 he had published Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys. He had also organized a group of scientists in the 1960s at Orsay, and they became widely known and respected throughout the worldwide scientific community for their experiments. As the field became more technically sophisticated, de Gennes began working with liquid crystals, a field in which he was able to work on simpler experiments.
The general problem in physics of trying to explain how systems behave in their transition from order to disorder is one that de Gennes addressed in his work with polymers. Work on polymers has been described by physicists as “messy” and called “dirt physics, dirt chemistry.” The ordinary rules of physics were difficult to apply to the complexities posed by a beaker of molten plastic. Made up of long chains of repeating units, polymers have been compared on the molecular level to clumps of spaghetti.
While their properties and behavior had been described by chemical laws, it was de Gennes who analyzed polymers using the laws of physics. He was able to compare polymers to systems that were simpler, like magnets, liquid crystals, and superconductors, whose mysteries he already understood. De Gennes discovered mathematical relationships that were shared by all these systems and was able to demonstrate that the thickness of the polymer chain was a function of its length. He was also able to calculate the length of the polymer chain using the same mathematics that defines the size of bubbles when liquid is boiled.
De Gennes’s work on polymers is considered invaluable because the knowledge he brought to the understanding of their nature makes it possible to control the important properties of the material when it is being used. He has been praised for his insatiable curiosity and his desire to see unifying principles.
In 1976 de Gennes became the director of the Ecole de Physique et Chimie in Paris and in 1988 he became the science director for chemical physics at Rhone-Poulenc. The STRASACOL was a joint project with physicists and chemists from Strasbourg, Saclay, and the College de France that de Gennes formed for polymer studies. He describes this period of his work in his book. Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics, published in 1979.
In 1999 De Genes worked as a science advisory for chemical physics in Rhodia in France till 2007.
( Drawn from the author’s introductory course at the Univ...)
(The first stage of the physics of long, flexible chains w...)
(This new edition of the classic text incorporates the man...)
(The works of the 1991 Nobel prize winner in physics, Pier...)
(The aim of this book is to give a unified and critical ac...)
(272 pp. Couverture défraîchie.)
De Genes was a member of American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Ukranian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society, Dutch Academy of Sciences and Académie des Sciences.
De Genes was married and had 3 children.