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Professor Yves Quéré

After graduating as an engineer, Yves Quéré turned to solid state physics where he specialized in the physical properties of transuranic metals, then in crystal defects of solids, including radiation effects in various types of materials. One of his main topics of interest has been the interaction of heavy particles with crystals, where he discovered the effect of dechanneling of particles by lattice distortions and defects.

Having started his career at the French atomic energy Commisssion (CEA, Saclay), he moved to Ecole polytechnique (Paris-Palaiseau) where he created a laboratory dedicated to physical properties of irradiated solids and was elected Professor of physics, President of the Department of physics and President of the Senate of Professors.
A member of the Académie des sciences since 1991, he has been for 10 years its foreign secretary, and was elected, in year 2000, co-Chair of the InterAcademy panel (IAP), the association of science Academies worldwide.

In 1996, Professor Quéré joined Georges Charpak and Pierre Léna to launch La main à la pâte, a renovation of science teaching in French schools, actively endorsed by the Académie. This lead the three of them to a high number of interactions with foreign countries in all continents. In the meantime, he proposed the IAP to include Science education of children among its scientific programme, provoking an implication of quite a number of science Academies in the field of children’s education.

Professor Quéré wrote several books, including Physics of materials, Gordon and Breach, 1998 ; La science institutrice, Odile Jacob, 2002 ; La sagesse du physicien, L’oeil neuf, 2005 ; and – cosigned with Georges Charpak and Pierre Léna – L’enfant et la science, Odile Jacob, 2005.

Among Professor Quéré's many awards and honors are:
Médaille d’argent du CNRS (1969)
Grande médaille de la Société française de métallurgie et des matériaux (1994)
Officier des palmes académiques
Officier de l’Ordre national du mérite
Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur

Sample of Academician's Research

(Click on pic to see animation)
Channeling and Dechanneling of particles in crystals: The Green surface shows the dependence of the potential energy in a crystal and red particles are the charges which moves along the crystallographic planes.
Because the crystalline plane has a high density of atomic electrons and nuclei, the channeled particles eventually suffer a high angle Rutherford scattering or energy-losses in collision with electrons and leave the channel. This is called the "dechannelling" process.

Prof. Quéré was the first to describe and model the dechanneling of fast particles by lattice defects in a series of classic papers in the late 1960's and early 1970's. He was able to obtain the fundamental result that the dechanneling cross-section for straight dislocation is proportional to the square root of the ion energy.

This opened the way to various applications for studying lattice defects and imageing in materials.