Jacques Livage

Jacques Livage (born 26 October 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French chemist holding the chair of condensed matter chemistry at the Collège de France and a member of the Académie des sciences.

Biography
In 1960, he obtained an engineering degree from the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris where he also obtained a doctorate. He was an assistant and then a master assistant at the same school from 1960 to 1973. He has been a professor at the Pierre-et-Marie Curie University since 1973 and a professor at the Collège de France since 2001.

Scientific work
Jacques Livage is a pioneer in the field of soft chemistry. In particular, he has developed sol-gel processes to obtain original materials that are inaccessible through the traditional channels of inorganic chemistry. His work aims in particular to copy biomineralisation processes, which are natural processes that make it possible to obtain glass-type materials under particularly mild conditions compared to conventional production processes. The industrial applications of such a chemistry are considerable.

He has published more than 500 scientific articles.

Awards and honours

 * Yvan Peyches Prize from the French Academy of sciences in 1980
 * Member of the International Academy of Ceramics in 1995
 * Member of the Institut universitaire de France from 1996 to 2001
 * Member of the French Academy of sciences since 1999
 * Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2003

Books

 * Theoretical chemistry: concepts and problems, Hermann, 1972
 * Materials: present and future" Rhône Poulenc Recherches, 1990
 * Les gels, Elsevier, 1995.
 * De la solution à l'oxyde, EDP Sciences et Éditions du CNRS, 1998.
 * Metal oxide chemistry and synthesis, J. Wiley, 2000.
 * Chemistry of condensed matter, Fayard, 2003.