Bernard Derrida was born in 1952 in El Biar, Algeria.
His family left Algeria in the spring of 1962, a few weeks before independence.

He passed the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure in 1971, then the agrégation in physics in 1974.
He then prepared his thesis at CEA in Saclay, then at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble. After his military service, he obtained his doctoratein1979.

From 1979 to 1993, he was a researcher in the theoretical physics department at CEN Saclay.
In 1993, he became a university professor. He teaches at the Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University and at the École normale supérieure, where he is a member of the statistical physics laboratory.
Since 2015, he has held the Statistical Physics Chair at theCollège de France.

Bernard Derrida has spent many years abroad, in particular in Denmark and the USA, in Italy, in Israel, in the UK and in Sweden. He has received several awards, including the Boltzmann Medal and the Three Physicists Prize. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

He is a theoretical physicist whose research has focused on dynamical systems, the theory of disordered media, non-equilibrium physics, and modeling in biology.

Awards

• 1977: Daniel Guinier prize from the French Physics Society
• 1985: IBM Prize for Physics
• 2001: Grand Prix Ampère from the French Academy of Sciences
• Since 2004: member of the French Academy of Sciences
• 2007-2015: Member of the Institut Universitaire de France
• 2010: Boltzmann Medal
• 2015: ENS Three Physicists Prize
• 2017: Knight of the Legion of Honor