Thierry Giamarchi awarded the Légion d’honneur

Thierry Giamarchi, professor in the Department of quantum matter physics at the University of Geneva and president of MaNEP Switzerland Network has been awarded the French Légion d’honneur at the rank of Chevalier. The insignia was presented to him by professor Alain Aspect, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate and Commander of the Légion d’honneur.

This distinction recognises his outstanding scientific contributions and his exemplary commitment to research and society.

During the ceremony, Alain Aspect highlighted Thierry Giamarchi’s scientific excellence and exceptional teaching abilities:

“It is an honour to present the insignia of the Légion d’honneur to an outstanding theoretician, a full professor at the University of Geneva — a position we would call here a professeur de classe exceptionnelle (…).
What stands out to me is that you started with the systems favoured by condensed matter theorists — electrons and magnetism — before moving on to cold atoms and quantum simulation. This gave me the opportunity to discover the person whom I asked to become my mentor in condensed matter physics, a field I had never worked in myself, having always focused on dilute matter, whether atomic gases, quantum or otherwise, or photons, even entangled ones.
It was through your participation in cold-atom conferences that I discovered your remarkable teaching talent. You were able to explain concepts and lines of reasoning typical of your field to me, using ways of thinking that were entirely unfamiliar to my own scientific community: atomic, molecular and optical physics. You started from the physics I knew and guided me into a world whose very existence I had not even suspected.”

A graduate of the École normale supérieure in Paris, Thierry Giamarchi earned his PhD from Paris-Sud University in 1987. He has been a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) since 1986. Between 1990 and 1992, he conducted research at Bell Laboratories in the United States before joining the University of Geneva in 2002 as a professor.

A theoretical physicist specialising in condensed matter, Thierry Giamarchi focuses his research on low-dimensional quantum systems and the effects of disorder on the properties of matter. His work has helped identify new disordered quantum phases, such as Bose glasses and Bragg glasses, and advance our understanding of collective phenomena and quantum phases.

Elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2013, he has received several distinctions throughout his career, including the Abragam Prize in 2000.