Catherine Bréchignac
(Physics)

Catherine Bréchignac is “Directeur de recherche” at the CNRS and President of the “Institut Optique”. After obtaining her PhD in 1977, she started a new field at the frontier of Atomic and Solid State Physics: the cluster physics as precursors of nano-objects. The study of nanoclusters ranging from a few atoms to several thousand atoms, which is a truly interdisciplinary study, provides a bridge between atomic and molecular and solid state physics. Her scientific achievements gained her a coveted Académie des Sciences prize in 1991, the CNRS Silver Medal in 1994, the Holweck Medal and prize from British and French Physical Societies in 2003, Doctor Honoris Causa of the “Freie Universität Berlin” in 2003. She was elected Corresponding Member of the Académie des Sciences in 1997 and Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. She was elected Member of the French Académie des Technologies in 2000.
Catherine Bréchignac has been very influential in many ways in International Sciences and Science Policy: in France, as the founder of Cluster network (1991), as the Director of the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton (1989-1995), as the Scientific Director of the CNRS- Department of Physics and Mathematics (1995-1997), as the Director general of the CNRS (1997-2000); in Europe as chairperson of the European Union Research Organizations Head of Research Councils (1998-2000), and as member or chairperson of many committees such as Member of the Board of the European Physical Society (1989-1994), member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) (1990-1994), as well as member of editorial board of several scientific journals.

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