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Marie-Louise Saboungi
French at heart
Mathematics, Physics, Planet and Universe
(MPPU)
Confirmed
Francophile Marie-Louise Saboungi is
the atypical, adventurous, and dedicated
director of the Center for Research
on Divided Matter (CRMD)1
in Orléans.
She was born in Lebanon in 1948 where
her impressive scientific career had
its foundation after an outstanding
high-school performance: she finished
first in mathematics in the country.
After studying physics in Beirut, she
arrived in France in 1969, an experience
that is engraved in her memory. |
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“I arrived in the midst of a cultural
revolution, but I could not bring myself
to address a single professor with the familiar
tu.” She completed her doctorate on
the statistical thermodynamics of molten
salts in record time. A postdoctoral appointment
in Chicago was the second turning-point
in her life, and also her second culture-shock.
“It was the seventies and America
was in turmoil with the scandal of Nixon's
resignation, the aftermath of the Vietnam
war...” Saboungi soon adjusted and
especially valued the wealth of social,
cultural, and intellectual activity she
found at the Argonne National Laboratory.
“This is what accounts for the richness
of American research,” she says; “the
coming together of scientists from every
field, the effervescence of ideas.”
There, she encountered a pioneer in the
field of molecular dynamics simulations,
the Indian-born Cambridge-educated Aneesur
Rahman.2
She went on to refine her research into
porous matter and lithium-based metal alloys.
“But I was homesick for France,”
she remembers. “I was the only woman
with the rank of Senior Scientist in the
Materials Science Division, but I never
felt that I was a minority. No doubt that
derived from my French background.”
In 1981, Saboungi was awarded a three-month
grant to work in Grenoble: “I thought
of it as a test, to see whether I still
felt at home in France. I was already thinking
about coming back.” But it was not
until 1999 that she joined the Center for
Research on Materials at High Temperature
in Orléans 3 as
a visiting scientist.4
“I was delighted,” she recalls.
“I had joined a laboratory where they
were experimenting with synchrotron radiation
using levitation.5 It was
a small research center, but full of inventive
thinking.” During this visit, she
was invited to become Director of CRMD,
and professor of physics at the University
of Orléans. For her, “combining
administration, teaching, and research is
a real challenge,” as is the recreation
of the “melting-pot” atmosphere
which she had so much enjoyed in the US.
Saboungi is committed to recreating this
diversity: joint thesis directors from Canada,
postdocs from Germany, Japan, China, India,
“and even Corsica,” she adds.
A joke that only a true French person can
appreciate.
1. Centre de recherches
sur la matière divisée (CNRS
/ Université d'Orléans joint
lab). Consult the web site.
2. The prize of the American
Physical Society was named after Professor
Rahman.
3. Centre de recherches
sur les matériaux à haute
temperature (CNRS lab).
4.These appointments are
intended for foreign researchers and last
for a maximum of three years.
5. A suspended metal sphere
is heated by a laser beam until it becomes
liquid, enabling measurement of all the
dynamic properties of its structure without
pollution by a container.
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