Lectures

Spurred on by Etienne Guyon I was always involved in teaching activities: first as his assistant, later as a conductor of experiments in an undergraduate lab and finally, since 1975 as a lecturer in DEA "Physique des Liquides".

During a few years my lectures were devoted to "Hydrodynamic instabilities". After that I have been asked by Sava Bratos to give lectures on "Liquid crystals".

I used to illustrate all my lectures with classroom experiments, simple and light enough for transportation by car from Orsay to Paris (Jussieu) or Cergy la Pontoise (lectures in tandem with Jean-François Sadoc). Most of these experiments are described in the book on liquid crystals in two volumes written with Patrick Oswald "Cristaux liquides : concepts et proprietés physiques illustrés par des expériences".

After about twenty years of lecturing on thermotropic liquid crystals, under the initiative of Michel Héritier I started to teach in tandem with Bertrand Deloche on "Soft condensed matter". Lectures of Deloche were devoted mainly to "Polymers" and mine to "Lyotropic liquid crystals". Once again our lectures given at ESPCI were illustrated by classroom experiments.

All these new experiments are described in the book "Cristaux liquides lyotropes: concepts et proprietés physiques illustrés par des expériences" which should be published soon.