Abstract
Jean-François Joanny, researcher at the Institut Curie and former director of ESPCI (École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielle de la ville de Paris), has devoted most of his career to the study of soft matter.
The term " matière molle " refers to all intermediate forms of matter between the solid and liquid states, including liquid crystals, polymers and colloidal structures. Because they are sensitive to the slightest disturbance, their physics is singular.
This field, in which French research excels, owes much to a French school founded by Pierre-Gilles De Gennes, who held the Quantum Condensed Matter Physics chair at the Collège de France for some thirty years (1971-2004).
The study of soft matter is based on very general laws that make it possible to describe a phenomenon simultaneously on several scales and to identify the universal properties of systems, within a highly interdisciplinary framework that combines physics, chemistry and biology. Jean-François Joanny, who is first and foremost a theorist, is one of today's leading specialists in this field. The original approach he has developed is based on analogies, applying an approach founded on curiosity and the most rigorous and precise observation of nature.
