- Louis Michel (physicist)
Louis Michel was a French mathematical physicist at
IHES . [citeweb |url=http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=809 |work=siam.org |title=A Gem of a Definition |author=Barry A. Cipra |date=January 8 ,1998 |accessdate=2007-11-19] He was born inRoanne nearLyon ,France onMay 4 ,1923 and died in Bures sur Yvette onDecember 30 ,1999 .Biography
Michel completed his studies at the Ecole Polytechnique in
Paris . After theWorld War II , he was inManchester , where he worked onweak interactions . Back in France, he was teaching in Lille and Orsay before creating the “Centre de Physique Theorique” ofEcole Polytechnique . In 1962 he became a permanent professor atIHES (Institut de Hautes Etudes Scientifiques) in Bures sur Yvette, where he remained until his retirement, and as an Emeritus until his death.Louis Michel was President of the [http://sfp.in2p3.fr/ “Societé Française de Physique”] between 1978 and 1980, and a member of the
Academie des Sciences since 1979. In 1984 he was awarded theWigner Medal .His scientific activities in the domain of Theoretical Physics encompassed many fields, from elementary particles and High Energy Physics to Crystals, and provided pioneering insights in spontaneous symmetry breaking in many contexts. His name is associated to the Bargman-Michel-Telegdi equation describing spin evolution in a magnetic field, [V. Bargman, L. Michel and V. Telegdi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2 (1959), 435 ] the theory of
phase transitions as a symmetry-breaking, [L. Michel, Nuovo Cimento 10 (1953), 10 ] the Michel-Radicati theory for the SU(3) octet, [L. Michel and L. Radicati, Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 66 (1971), 758; Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré 18 (1973), 185] and more generally his geometric theory ofspontaneous symmetry breaking , [L. Michel, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris 272 (1971), 433] [L. Michel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 52 (1980), 617] L. Michel, J.S. Kim, J. Zak and B. Zhilinskii, Phys. Rep. 341 (2004), 1] and to several results incrystallography .After his death, the
IHES created the [http://www.ihes.fr/IHES/Personne/chairs.html Chaires Louis Michel] for distinguished long-term visitors to honour his memory.References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.