J.-P. Poirier is an engineer from the École Centrale Paris (1959), Doctor of Science (1971).
He was an engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) from 1963 to 1978[1] and a physicist at the Institut de physique du globe in Paris from 1978 to 2003, where he created the Geomaterials Laboratory.
[2] He was correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences in 1994, and was elected member in October 2002.
[3] He has been elected to the Bureau des Longitudes[4] since 1996 and is a member of the National Academy of History of Ecuador.
He has worked on the physical properties of the deep Earth (lower mantle and core) and is interested in historical seismology.