Louis Néel

Born on 22 November 1904 in Lyon, France, physicist Louis Néel shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on the magnetic properties of solids. He earned his PhD in 1932 at the University of Strasbourg, where he began his research on magnetism under Pierre Weiss. In 1937 Néel was appointed professor of physics there. During World War II, Néel relocated to Grenoble, where he worked on demagnetizing French warships to protect them from German magnetic mines. After the war, he worked over the next several decades to turn Grenoble into a major international center of research. Besides being a professor at the University of Grenoble from 1945 until his retirement in 1976, he founded several laboratories as well as the Center for Nuclear Studies in 1956, for which he served as director until 1971. Over his career, Néel developed the concepts of antiferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism and helped explain many other aspects of magnetism, such as superantiferromagnetism. The Néel temperature, the temperature above which an antiferromagnetic material becomes paramagnetic, was named in his honor. Besides the Nobel Prize, Néel received numerous other awards and distinctions, including the French Legion of Honor. Here is the Physics Today obituary that ran after Néel died in 2000 at age 95. (Photo credit: National Center for Scientific Research, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Weber Collection, Physics Today Collection)

Date in History: 22 November 1904