Maurice Kleman


Maurice Kleman was a French physicist involved in experimental and theoretical studies of the physics of defects; he has covered various fields of research, from condensed matter to heliophysics. As an author, he has been collected by libraries worldwide.

Early life

Kleman was born in Paris in a family of Jewish origin which was saved from the Nazi persecutions during the Second World War by the inhabitants of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Haute-Loire, as many other refugees were; this village is collectively honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

Education

Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines de Paris; PhD under J. Friedel’s supervision on ferromagnetic thin films, at the French Iron and Steel Institute. Postdoc at the University of Oxford.

Career

Kleman belonged to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique since 1969, first as a member of the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay, which he headed from 1982 to 1984, then of the Laboratoire de Minéralogie et de Cristallographie de Paris. He joined the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in 2010 and has been visiting professor at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Research

Kleman’s research covers many domains, in materials science, more recently in heliophysics. In all these domains his interests are concerned with the concept of defect, in the continuation of F.C. Frank and J. Friedel. He demonstrated the role of curved crystal defects in the topology of frustrated systems. He developed with J. Friedel the concepts of continuous defects. He showed that interplanetary magnetic flux ropes can be understood as extended singularities of the vector potential.

Awards

Books

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