[2][3] Jacques Malavieille grew up in that part of the valley of the river Lot located in the department of Lozère.
Some of his early fieldwork in the French Variscan orogenic belt and North America's Basin and Range Province contributed significantly to knowledge about metamorphic core complexes.
Malavieille gained an international reputation for pioneering applications of analog modeling to scientific understanding of how fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges develop.
[3] His research has contributed to "understanding of accretionary wedges, seamount collision, basal underplating, tectonic erosion, oblique accretion.
[1] In 2012 he shared, with co-author Elena Konstantinovskaya,[15] the Geological Association of Canada's Dave Elliott Best Paper Prize.
The prize for best paper in structural geology and tectonics published in 2011 honored their article Thrust wedges with décollement levels and syntectonic erosion: A view from analog models.