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Nobel prize-winning French scientist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who was dubbed the "Isaac Newton of our time" for his pioneering research on liquid crystals, has died. He was 74.
De Gennes was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for his breakthrough work on liquid crystals, a substance that has the properties of both a liquid and a solid and is now used in televisions and computer screens.
De Gennes was born in Paris in 1932. After graduating from Ecole Normale Superieure university in Paris, he began research on atomic energy and magnetism. While other laboratories were paralysed by the student riots that shook France in 1968, Gennes brought together several teams of researchers to work on liquid crystals.
New French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed de Gennes' "immense talent", calling him "an exceptional physicist and one of our greatest scientists".
