Bernard Derrida is Honorary Professor at the Collège de France, where he held the Statistical Physics Chair from 2014 to 2023.
Bernard Derrida was born in 1952 in El Biar, Algeria. His family left Algeria in the spring of 1962, a few weeks before independence.
He passed the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure in 1971, then the agrégation in physics in 1974.
He went on to prepare his thesis at the CEA in Saclay, then at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble. After his military service, he obtained his doctorate in 1979.
From 1979 to 1993, he worked as a researcher in the theoretical physics department at CEN Saclay.
In 1993, he became a university professor. He taught at the Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University and at the École normale supérieure, where he was a member of the statistical physics laboratory.
Since 2015, he has held the Statistical Physics Chair at the Collège de France.
Bernard Derrida has spent many years abroad, in particular in Denmark, Italy, Israel, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. He has received several awards, including the Boltzmann Medal and the Three Physicists Prize. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
He is a theoretical physicist whose research has focused on dynamical systems, disordered media theory, non-equilibrium physics, and modeling in biology.
Awards
- 1977: Daniel Guinier prize from the French Physics Society
- 1985: IBM Prize for Physics
- 2001: Grand Prix Ampère from the French Academy of Sciences
- Since 2004: member of the French Academy of Sciences
- 2007-2015: Member of the Institut Universitaire de France
- 2010: Boltzmann Medal
- 2015: ENS Three Physicists Prize
- 2017: Knight of the Legion of Honor