Paris- French winner of the Nobel Prize for physics Pierre- Gilles de Gennes has died at the age of 74, his family said Tuesday in Paris. The scientist and engineer passed away on Friday. He was awarded science's most distinguished prize in 1991 for his work on the behaviour of molecules and molecular chains in liquid crystals.
De Gennes had discovered "that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymer."
A member of the French Academy of Sciences and an honorary professor of the College de France, de Gennes was also the recipient of numerous other international scientific accolades.
He began his career with the French nuclear energy commission CEA.
