Jacques Friedel

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Jacques Friedel (11 February 1921 – 27 August 2014) was a French physicist and materials scientist who helped shape condensed matter physics. He is known for theories on transition metals, dislocations, Friedel oscillations, and the Friedel sum rule.

Friedel studied at École Polytechnique (1944–46) and Mines ParisTech (1946–48), earned a licence ès sciences at the University of Paris in 1948, and completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 1952 under Nevill Francis Mott. He also earned a Doctorat d'État in Paris in 1954. He became assistant at Paris-Sorbonne University in 1956 and then a full professor of Solid State Physics at the University of Paris-Sud from 1959 to 1989, where he helped found the Laboratory of Solid State Physics. He wrote more than 200 journal articles.

Friedel served as president of the French Physical Society, the European Physical Society, and the French Academy of Sciences (1992–1994). His awards include the CNRS Gold Medal (1970), foreign membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1988). He received the Holweck Prize (1964) and the Von Hippel Award (1988); he was a fellow of the APS and EPS. He was knighted in the Légion d'Honneur in 1989 and later promoted to higher ranks, eventually receiving the Grand Cross in 2013.

Friedel came from a family of scientists: his great-grandfather Charles Friedel was a chemist, his grandfather Georges Friedel studied liquid crystals, and his father Edmond Friedel led the National School of Mines. He died on 27 August 2014 at age 93.