Professor Ludwik Leibler

Prof. Ludwik Leibler, Guest Lecturer at the Emilio Segre Distinguished Lectures in Physics Endowed by Raymond and Beverly Sackler for the academic year 2013/2014, is an exceptional grade senior researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and adjunct professor at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris is the director of Soft Matter and Chemistry Laboratory at ESPCI.

Prof. Leibler received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Warsaw University and completed his post-doctoral studies at the Collège de France in Paris under the direction of Nobel Prize laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. He was the founding director of a joint laboratory between CNRS and chemical company Elf Atochem (later Arkema), which regrouped researchers from academia and industry. In 2001 he became an Adjunct Professor of Soft Matter and Chemistry at École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Paris.

Prof. Leibler is the recipient of several important prizes and honors, including the EPJE Pierre-Gilles De Gennes Lecture Prize (2014), the CNRS Medal of innovation (2013), the Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (2006) and the Polymer Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society (2007).    In addition, he is a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering and an associate editor of Macromolecules Journal.

Prof. Leibler’s research interests include the influence of molecular disorder on mesoscopic structure and properties of polymer materials, impact resistance, fracture and adhesion, design of stimuli responsive materials and supramolecular chemistry. Prof. Leibler has become famous worldwide for his important contributions to the study of polymer dynamics.