[1] He graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), and, on completing his thesis, was invited by Louis Néel to a post at the University of Grenoble, where he established the Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique.

Imprudently (in view of the consequences at that time of failing an entrance examination), and contrary to received practice, Soutif applied to only one of the grandes écoles, the ENS.

The climate of arbitrariness and uncertainty that prevailed during that period is illustrated by the fact that on returning from ENS one afternoon in 1944, the young Soutif was intercepted by the concièrge who warned him that the Gestapo was searching the family apartment and that he must stay out of sight.

During his doctoral thesis at the ENS, Michel Soutif founded the high-frequency laboratory SACM (societé alsacienne de constructions mécaniques), later to become Alcatel.

With the help of the Centre national d'études des télécommunications (CNET) he built the first Hertzian telephone link connecting Mount Boron, (Nice) with Corsica.

From these beginnings in 1948, upon Soutif's arrival in the general physics laboratory in Grenoble, a branch of Alcatel dedicated to research into centimetre wavelength radiation was established there.

The invitation extended to Soutif by Néel in 1951 to come to Grenoble was a response to the loss to science in France of the time and the resources that the war had wasted, and to the urgency of enlarging research into the properties of matter through the widest range of possible techniques.

On his arrival in Grenoble, Soutif found little equipment in the general physics laboratory but succeeded in recovering an electromagnet from Bordeaux that, inconveniently, required a high current.

Through improvisation and persuasion, as well as with the help of special funding from the Ministry of Education, he was able to build up a viable laboratory in the following years and attract young research workers recently graduated from the ENS.

[6] In a Franco-German project for a European millimetre wavelength interferometer telescope he offered to build its base laboratory, the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique,[7] on the campus of Grenoble University.

Soutif played an important role in presenting the scientific case to the political authorities, notably Louis Mermaz, to reconsider in favor of Grenoble.