Page 8 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

BIOGRAPHY
Bernard Jacrot by Joe Zaccai
Bernard Jacrot, who was the first French director of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), also played an important role in the beginnings of neutron scattering in condensed matter physics in the nineteen fifties and of structural biology in the seventies and eighties. Bernard was always reluctant to speak about himself. When I met him he had already switched to biology but I learnt
a lot about his early career from his colleagues, who brought forward not only his scientific and technical achievements but also his profound humanism.
Jacrot entered the “École Polytechnique” in 1947. After graduation, he joined the CEA in Saclay, where a small reactor had just been built. He was among the few who initiated the application of inelastic neutron scattering to the then revolutionary science of condensed matter physics and is considered among the founding fathers of French neutron scattering. Jacrot was part of the group that first proposed the ILL at the Geneva conference in 1964. German physicists and in particular Maier-Leibnitz, who became the first director of ILL, saw in the project a concrete political act, encouraged by Adenauer and de Gaulle. French and German neutron scatterers were fascinated by the achievements promised by the joint technical and scientific adventure.
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