pierre-gilles de gennes (a life in science) || studious years

b1180 Pierre-Gilles de Gennes: A Life in Science

35

Chapter 3

Studious Years

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes had worked hard at lycée, but this was noth-ing compared to what awaited him in classe préparatoire... He wouldlive the next two years like a long tunnel, only emerging for shortintervals of light in the house his mother had just bought in theSouthern Alps, where he could feel at home, recharging his batter-ies on mountain walks.

“In 1948, my mother had decided to find some little spot in the moun-tains where she could breathe the “fresh air”! She bought an old building nearOrcières, a former farmhouse, with a sheep stable and a hay barn. She grad-ually refurbished it and it became the family haven, where we still stay today,with my children and with friends”, he recounted. At the beginning,conditions were very basic. There was no running water. There wasjust one stove to heat the house, and the toilet was a wooden shackin the garden. Gradually, however, the house became comfortable,to the point that Yvonne de Gennes would divide her time betweenParis and Orcières, living, as before, on her investments. “Havingbeen a nurse during the Great War, she fitted easily into the region. Whenevershe went to anyone’s house, she could always find someone of her generationto share memories with. People treated her with respect.” Especially as shecreated a library in the village and would visit old people: “TheCountess”, as they called her, was a prominent local figure.

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This house in Orcières became Pierre-Gilles’ refuge fromthe age of 16, and the Champsaur Valley in which it stands, his play-ground. “I would spend days on end walking in the mountains. I got to lovehiking and, to a lesser degree, rock climbing. I would hunt marmots with arifle, and we would eat them when we were camping up by the lakes. But youhave to prepare the meat in a special way: first we would remove the skin,which we would give to a furrier in Gap; then we would carefully remove thefat, because marmots have a thick layer that smells disgusting; then we wouldleave the meat in a stream for about two days, to get rid of the smell. In theend, cooked with wine, it tastes like very strong game”.

He often invited his classmates to Orcières. His lycée com-panions, Bernard Prugnat, Boris Bespaloff and Jacques Chemincame there in the summer of 1949, after baccalaureate. The four ofthem would set off haphazardly in their boots in the early morning,to taste the joys of rock climbing. They had no pitons or karabiners,and would tie ropes around their waists for safety, “So that, if one fell,he would pull all the others after him”, as Jacques Chemin points out.They were fearless and would try every route until they reached thesummit, frequently taking foolish risks. “We didn’t realise the danger, orrather, we didn’t care. We came close to disaster several times. It still makesme shudder to think of it”, he confesses.

Back at the house, the boys would sit down to eat, often withfriends of Yvonne de Gennes, for example Monir and Madjid, aPersian couple that Pierre-Gilles would visit in Iran in 1973, andNietta, his grandfather’s second wife. “My mother also still employed aupair girls, which gave the house a very cheerful atmosphere. We had a lot ofthem, Dutch or German… They often ended up in the arms of one or other ofus”, smiled Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. Dinner was a simple meal — adish of pasta or lentils — but Yvonne de Gennes played her role asmistress of the house and presided over the table with regal authority.After dinner, they would all sit around the fire and conversationwould flow. Nietta, a bookbinder of note between the 1920s and1940s, would describe her encounters with André Gide, Jean Paulhanand Jacques Rivière, writers of the New French Review. Pierre-Gilleswould sometimes get out his guitar and play a few fado tunes, orMonir might sing a Central Asian folk song or two. The boys would

36 BIOGRAPHY OF PIERRE-GILLES DE GENNES


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chat and joke together. They got on well, but essentially had little incommon apart from their friendship with Pierre-Gilles, so that sum-mer was the last time they would all spend time together.

An Unusual Choice

As the new academic year neared, Pierre-Gilles shut himself in hisroom and immersed himself in books on maths and physics. Hewould come back from his walks with frogs to dissect “for practice”.Indeed, he had a tough programme in natural sciences ahead of him,as he had not opted for a traditional classe préparatoire (maths andphysics) — “He was far too much of a maverick to stick to the beaten path”,according to Jacques Chemin — but for a curriculum called Normalesciences expérimentales (or “NSE”), which included biology, with mathsplaced on the same footing as the other subjects. “Because the selectionwas not based on mathematics, this class was more diverse and allowed otherqualities, such as observational skills, to be expressed and recognised”,recalled Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. Later, when asked about thereforms he would like to see in education, he would always cite NSEas an example. The idea of applying to this class had been suggestedto his mother by the secretary at lycée Claude Bernard, MadameNicknecker. “It was good advice! She was probably also aware that thecourse had excellent teachers”, he guessed. Their friend’s choice cameas no surprise to his classmates: NSE was there to prepare studentsfor the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, the holyof holies of France’s elite schools, and none of them could imaginehim heading for the École Polytechnique or some other engineeringschool, to follow a career in industry.

NSE was a stepping stone into the École Normale Supérieure,but only the best would be admitted. However, all the pupils inPierre-Gilles’s class had obtained at least a B+ grade in the bac-calaureate — a sine qua non for entry into classe préparatoire at theSaint-Louis lycée — or an A grade. From the start of the academicyear, the teachers’ message was clear: “There are 30 of you in the class.Last year, five dropped out and three ended up in psychiatric care. In the end, only five of you will get into the École Normale!” Nonetheless, the

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atmosphere in the class was not bad. “There were no vicious rivalries”,recalled Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. The first weeks were tough,and...so were the ones that followed. “The lycée was a dismal place.When I went back there almost 60 years later to give a lecture, it had been ren-ovated and I didn’t find it as dark and grimy as I remembered.” The regimewas one of iron discipline. Anyone who arrived late in the morningwas likely to find the door locked, and students had to form ranksbefore filing into class. “We weren’t allowed to go out. We were given deten-tion every week and we were constantly hauled over the coals.” No onecomplained, everyone had just one goal: to pass the exam into ÉcoleNormale. Pierre-Gilles, like the others, received his fair share ofinsults. “In biology especially, my grades were average. When the teacher gaveus a specimen to look at, my powers of observation were not very good,whereas some students had a real gift for it. You could say I was too much ofa theorist. Even in maths, I remember getting a telling-off. We had a fearsomebut excellent maths teacher called Maurice Chazal. “Even a clog-makerwould be able to solve this simple little problem, and you can’t!”, he onceshouted at me”, he chuckled. “The slightest misdemeanour led to 24 hoursof detention, a whole weekend.” The day the maths teacher caught himreading a biology textbook in mid-lesson, the punishment wasunequivocal: 24 hours detention. He landed the same punishmentin physics. “I was busy with, let us say, “nonscientific” subjects, and I failedto hand in my assignments twice in a row. I imagined that the teacher,Mr Legris — whom we actually liked a lot, he was always very calm —didn’t keep an accurate account of the assignments handed in. Big mistake!I can still see him today, sitting at his desk, impassive: “De Gennes, twoassignments missed: 24 hours detention.” He was right to set me on thestraight and narrow. It was essential at that stage to concentrate on workrather than chasing skirts”.

The days followed each other, one much like the next.Pierre-Gilles would wake up early, set out from Rue Fantin-Latourand hurry sleepily along the banks of the Seine to catch the Metro.Once in class, he would nod off in the first hour when he hadworked late the night before. He focused his efforts on the naturalsciences, forcing himself to fill entire notebooks with sketches tosharpen his powers of observation, because his grades in the other



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subjects were good, although not as good as the best student in theclass, André Authier (who would become a professor at Pierre etMarie Curie University in Paris, specialising in crystallography).However, Pierre-Gilles stood out from the other students, in thisclass too, for his facility and ingenuity. “At the time, inspectors used tocome round the classes. In mathematics, one of them had sent a student to theboard to solve a problem. It was Pierre-Gilles, who had begun the calculationsbut was interrupted by the inspector: “No, that’s not the way”, he said, beforestarting on a long demonstration. At the end, Pierre-Gilles observed: “Look,Sir, I was on the same track.” He had taken a shortcut and not argued: helet the inspectors finish”, reported Jacques Signoret, a classmate andfuture professor of embryology in Caen. This incident gave Pierre-Gilles a certain kudos with his fellow students. But his popularityreally took off the day the physics teacher set him the followingproblem: “Two bubbles, one small and one big, are stuck together and sep-arated by a thin partition. What happens when the partition is breached?Answer without thinking.” Pierre-Gilles calmly replied: “That’s exactlywhen you need to think.” 1 Teacher and students alike burst out laugh-ing. His repartee hit home and became the class motto, repeatedevery time they were faced with a hard problem.

Pierre-Gilles swotted, showing a huge capacity for work andconcentration, absorbing the toughest courses and storing up theessential fundamentals of maths and physics. “Some people haveappalling memories of their classe préparatoire, but I don’t. It was hard,but ultimately healthy. In retrospect, I tell myself that the constant pressurewas a good thing, because it kept us on our toes.”

He allowed himself little free time, but sometimes, on hisway home after class, he would take a detour to a small shop in theLatin Quarter to listen to and buy jazz records. He was also devel-oping an interest in classical music. “I discovered classical music as aresult of Cocteau’s film Les enfants terribles, whose original soundtrack,especially a long Bach concerto, I found extraordinary! My friend Jacques

Studious Years 39

1 Contrary to what one might imagine, the small bubble deflates into the larger one,not the opposite, because being smaller, the pressure inside it is greater.


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Signoret also introduced me to baroque music, as well as opera, which wepreviously found slightly ridiculous and old-fashioned,” he recounted.“Pierre-Gilles was curious about everything and very cultivated. One day,when our family doctor — Paul Viard, a very unusual man and a greatlover of painting (he had treated the biggest names in interwar Frenchpainting, who had paid him in pictures, so that his dining room was linedwith works by Modigliani, Fernand Léger and others) — was a guest inour house, Pierre-Gilles impressed him so much that our doctor invited himto dinner the following week”, recalled Jacques Signoret. The twoyoung men would also attend occasional concerts and lectures onmusic.

However, Pierre-Gilles’ first love was jazz and he would spend“most Saturday evenings” in clubs like the Vieux colombier, the Rose rougeor the Tabou, high spots of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in company withJacques Chemin and his clique. In the cellars of Saint-Germain,when everyone else was holding forth, Pierre-Gilles would standslightly apart, cigarette in hand, rarely intervening, but always readywith a well-placed comment or witticism to set people laughing. Oneevening, he arrived with his new girlfriend, Nadine. “She quickly fittedinto my group of jazz lovers, which wasn’t easy, because it was quite a closedgroup”, he recalled with pleasure.

Seaside Course

In the second year of classe préparatoire, the Easter holidays offeredhim a breath of fresh air before the entry exams. He undertook acourse at the Banyuls-sur-mer oceanographic observatory, with aclassmate Pierre Favard. “We were welcomed by the director, Georges Petit,a specialist on cetaceans, a picturesque character with a good sense ofhumour, but we only had eyes for his daughter, Jacqueline, a very attractivegirl with a Nefertiti profile. She impressed us by catching dogfish with herhands in the aquarium, since they are little sharks with a nasty bite. Webecame inseparable for the whole course”, he recalled.

It was the first time that Pierre-Gilles had set foot in aresearch lab. “Aside from the coursework, I really enjoyed collectingcalcareous algae to look at under the microscope. We also used to go into



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mountain caves to bring back strange cave-dwelling fish, which had losttheir eyes in the darkness and developed other senses. It was very interesting.Jacqueline, Pierre and I would also go birdwatching in the wetlands on theedge of the Pyrenees. It was during that course that I really learned toobserve. It only lasted two weeks, but it left its mark.” He came back withdozens of sketches, but would sadly lose his sketch folder at theVieux Colombier, “a tragic loss”, in his opinion.

After these two idyllic and formative weeks, it was time toreturn to Paris... and start revising for the entrance exams. Predictionswere rife. André Authier was the favourite. “But I knew Pierre-Gilles well,and predicted that he would win, and that’s what happened! His relaxedappearance disguised — with a certain disingenuousness — a huge capacityfor work and he put in the required surge at just the right moment,” reportedAndré Authier. As the exams began, Pierre-Gilles retained his cus-tomary sang froid, as if the prevailing excitement had nothing to dowith him, even arriving at one exam carrying his swimming gear.“I also remember the botany exam, where I arrived firstly in shorts and secondlylate. The teacher, Lucien Plantefol, an illustrious botanist, gave me a hugetelling-off, but I still got through”, he laughed. “For the oral on animal engi-neering, my examiner was Marcel Prenant, then a big name in biology, whowas very nice to me. He showed me an object and asked me what it was. I hadno idea... I was completely stumped! In fact, it was a wasps nest.” On theother hand, the mathematics oral gave him no trouble. Questioned byGustave Choquet, a renowned mathematician who gave his name tothe “Choquet simplex”, he completed all the exercises, as he said,“without help”. His examiner was impressed and asked him what heplanned to do later on. “After I told him that I wanted to do physics, he said:“Make sure you don’t drop maths.” It was good advice, which I only partiallyfollowed over the following years. But I caught up later, for example by teach-ing myself group theory all on my own”, he noted.

Top of the Class

The results of the entry examination to the École Normale Supérieurewere announced in July, in Rue d’Ulm, and Pierre-Gilles came firstin the NSE section. After the announcement, the students were

Studious Years 41


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given their traditional drenching. Whilst André Authier, who hadalso been admitted, prudently withdrew, Pierre-Gilles joined in thegame, soaked but happy. He had no idea what the future held, orwhat he would do later, apart from “physics”, but he didn’t care. Thefollowing year he would be entering the prestigious school in theRue d’Ulm.

“My mother was pleased that I came first in the competition, but itwasn’t a surprise: she took it for granted.” Nonetheless, she proudly toldeveryone that her son had been admitted to the École Normale“with the highest number of points ever achieved in the exam…”, omittingto specify: in the NSE section. Lucien de Gennes, Pierre-Gilles’physician uncle, congratulated him and gave him a small motorcycleas a reward. Nothing could have pleased him more. “That motorbikegave me a fantastic sense of freedom!”, he recalled. Pierre-Gilles imme-diately took advantage of it: he bought a youth hostel map and setoff “pretty much on a whim” towards the south of France. On the way,he spent a few days in the smart hostel in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon,resting and contemplating the Palace of the Popes, stretched out onthe terrace with a book in his hand. “Then I arrived in the Midi, butthere were too many people so I set off towards the mountains. And there I hada wonderful time in the Guillestre youth hostel, at the edge of the Queyras inthe Southern Alps: firstly, I met some wonderful youth hostellers — a femaleformer dancer and a male photographer — with whom I stayed friends untiltheir deaths, and secondly a young woman called Mathilde, who I fell deeplyin love with”. She was a little older than him, very beautiful and ath-letic. They went hiking and slept under the stars, spending an idyllicmonth together. She was his first real love, replacing all his formersweethearts. “Sadly, we only saw each other once in Paris. I was fond of her,but my priorities had changed: I had just taken the plunge into the École nor-male”, he confessed.



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pierre-gilles de gennes (a life in science) || studious years

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