Denis Gratias

In 1978, Denis Gratias defended his PhD thesis at the Structural Metallurgy Laboratory (CNRS-ENSCP), entitled Cristallography of interfaces in homogeneous crystals[2] and developed with Richard Portier a formalism of fast electron diffraction.

[3] He then completed his post-doctoral training at the University of California at Berkeley (USA) where he was interested in the problems of statistical thermodynamics of generalized mean field[4] (Cluster Variation Method).

Back in France, he took up his position at the Centre d'Études de Chimie Métallurgique (CECM), CNRS laboratory in Vitry-sur-Seine (France), but was soon invited by John-Werner Cahn to the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA) to participate in an interdisciplinary collaboration on theoretical physics and materials science.

Upon his return, a long period of intense collaboration on crystallography began between the CECM at Vitry and the Centre de physique théorique (CPHT) of the École Polytechnique with Marianne Quiquandon, André Katz and Michel Duneau.

[6] In 2000, Denis Gratias and his wife Marianne Quiquandon moved to Châtillon to the Laboratoire d'étude des microstructures (LEM [archive], a joint ONERA-CNRS laboratory), which he directed until 2009.