Since 1922, the Louis Ancel Award is granted every year by the French Society of Physics. It rewards a French physicist for his/her work in condensed matter physics.
The jury of the Ancel Award, awarded by the Condensed Matter Division of the French Society of Physics, reviewed excellent nominations again this year, including two exceptional ones that it did not consider appropriate to decide between them, as they are so close in quality.
The jury unanimously wanted the Ancel Award to be awarded jointly to two winners: Denis Bartolo and Étienne Brasselet.
Press Release of the French Society of Physics (in French)
Denis Bartolo
Denis Bartolo is a professor of physics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Lyon, France. He studied at ESPCI Paris and obtained a PhD in physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University. In 2006, he was appointed assistant professor at Paris Diderot University, and joined ENS de Lyon. His research group combines microfluidic experiments, simulations, and theory to investigate collective phenomena in soft and active matter. Recent examples include flocking motion in disordered media.
Étienne Brasselet
Étienne Brasselet is CNRS Research Director at the Aquitaine Waves and Matter Laboratory (known as LOMA) in Talence. After completing a thesis in joint-supervision between the Université Paris Sud and the Université Laval de Québec in 2001, followed by two postdocs at the ENS in Cachan and Laval University and an ATER at the ENS de Lyon Laboratory of Physics, Étienne Brasselet was recruited to work at the CNRS in 2006 at LOMA, before becoming Research Director in 2016. His research focuses on the interaction of light with condensed matter, liquid or solid.