Michel Soutif

Michel Soutif (8 July 1921 – 28 June 2016), Officier de la Légion d’honneur, Grand Officier de l’ordre national du Mérite, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mali, was a French scientist and educator, known for his major contribution to the development of the University of Grenoble in the years following the Second World War. He is also known for his early work on nuclear magnetic resonance, centimetre wavelength radiation (microwaves) and electron spin resonance. 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. Both men, Néel and Soutif, understood the importance of the relationship between industry and fundamental research, and of the consequent need to attract new industries to the surrounding region. Soutif's success in obtaining teaching posts and in reinforcing the discipline of physics at the University of Grenoble was remarkable. He is recognized not only for his scientific achievements but also for the outstanding clarity of his teaching and his mission to spread scientific reason.
These were talents that, in the positions of responsibility and decision that he occupied during his career, propelled him to become one of the principal architects of the growth of the University.

Upbringing and education

Michel Soutif was the son of Elise Baudoin and Edmond Soutif, assistant director at the Ministry of Finances, who was in charge of finances of the Paris hospitals.

Soutif was educated at the Lycée Michelet (Vanves). In preparation for the ''grandes écoles'' competition examinations, he subsequently attended the Lycée Saint-Louis, which, at the outbreak of World War II was evacuated to the Lycée des Filles in Tournon. 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. He was successful, entering in 1942, and went on to graduate first out of his class.

Conditions in occupied Paris during the war were not easy, even dangerous, as many students at the ENS were active in the ''résistance''. The Soutif family lived in an apartment in Boulevard St Michel, and Soutif's father was, not incorrectly, suspected of involvement. 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. The Gestapo officer conducted his search of the rooms and his interrogation of Edmond Soutif, using as a support for his notes the folder taken from the writing desk in the apartment. Unable to discover incriminating evidence, they eventually left. But had he only opened the folder, the officer would have found the letters that would certainly have condemned to death not only Soutif's family but also their correspondents. The event served to strengthen Soutif's conviction at the end of the war of the need for peace and collaboration between the nations.

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 centimeter wavelength radiation was established there. Its generous financing enabled the purchase of a substantial part of the scientific equipment for all the groups in what was later to become the Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique.

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. For the power supply, batteries were salvaged from a captured German submarine and he was then faced with the problem of finding an electrical generator to recharge them. 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. In 1958 he became head of the General Physics Laboratory. The Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique] (later to become the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique), was founded in 1966.

Following the university reform act of Edgar Faure

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