Louis Michel (physicist)

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Louis Michel (born May 4, 1923 in Roanne near Lyon , † December 30, 1999 in Bures-sur-Yvette ) was a French theoretical physicist.

Michel studied at the École polytechnique in Paris and then did research in Manchester (on weak interaction ), Copenhagen and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton . He was then in France at the Universities of Lille , Paris (Orsay), the École polytechnique (where he created a center for theoretical physics, the Center de physique theorique) and then at the IHES in Bures-sur-Yvette, where he became professor in 1962 became a permanent member and taught after his retirement until his death.

Michel described the muon decay (into one electron and two neutrinos) using the "Michel parameter" that he introduced. In theory of the strong interaction, he proved the conservation of G-parity , which for. B. forbids that an odd number of pions changes into an even number and vice versa due to the strong interaction. In 1959, together with Valentine Bargmann and Valentine Telegdi, he developed the Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation for the precession of the spin in a magnetic field. With Luigi Radicati he gave a geometric description of the adjoint representation of the SU (3) (octet) with applications to the quarks . In the 1980s he also explored symmetries and symmetry breaks in solid state physics, using topological methods, and in the 1990s quasicrystals . As early as 1953 he described phase transitions as symmetry breaking phenomena.

From 1978 to 1980 he was President of the French Physical Society and on various high-level committees of the CNRS . He was an officer in the Legion of Honor and a member of the French Academy of Sciences (1979). He won the Wigner Medal in 1984 . IHES created a visiting professorship that bears his name. In 1966 he was invited speaker at the ICM in Moscow (theory des groupes et particules elementaires).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Proceedings Physical Society A, Vol. 63, 1950, p. 514
  2. ↑ Michel Nuovo Cimento Vol. 10, 1953, p. 319
  3. ↑ Bargmann, Michel, Telegdi Physical Review Letters, Vol. 2, 1959, p. 435
  4. ↑ Michel, Radicati, Annals of Physics Vol. 66, 1971, p. 758; "The geometry of the octet" ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Annales Institut H. Poincaré, Vol. 18, 1973, p. 185 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.numdam.org
  5. ↑ Michel, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 52, 1980, p. 617
  6. ↑ with JS Kim, J. Zak, B. Zhilinskii, Physics Reports Vol. 341, 2004, p. 1
  7. ↑ Nuovo Cimento Vol. 10, 1953, p. 10
personal data
SURNAME Michel, Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Roanne
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1999
Place of death Bures-sur-Yvette