Stéphan Fauve (born 20 December 1955 in Paris) is a French physicist. He is a professor at the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

(ENS) in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, a member of the ENS Physics Laboratory.

Biography

Stéphan Fauve, is a graduate of the

École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Sav ...

(1976–1980), agrégé de sciences physiques (1979) and docteur ès sciences (1984). After defending his thesis in 1984 under the direction of Albert Libchaber as a preparatory associate at the École normale supérieure, Stephan Fauve was successively Professor at the

École normale supérieure de Lyon The École normale supérieure de Lyon (also known as ENS de Lyon, ENSL or Normale Sup' Lyon) is a French grande école located in the city of Lyon. It is one of the four prestigious écoles normales supérieures in France. The school is ...

(1987–1997), then at the ENS in Paris since 1997. He is a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

, Physics section.

Scientific work

Stéphan Fauve's work has focused mainly on non-linear physics. His thesis work focused on the study of various scenarios of transition to chaos, in particular the measurement of

critical exponent Critical or Critically may refer to: *Critical, or critical but stable, medical states **Critical, or intensive care medicine *Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences. *Critical Software, a company specializing in ...

s associated with the cascade of period doubling. He then carried out the first experiment to highlight the phenomenon of

stochastic resonance Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon in which a signal that is normally too weak to be detected by a sensor, can be boosted by adding white noise to the signal, which contains a wide spectrum of frequencies. The frequencies in the white no ...

. He was one of the founders of the physics laboratory of ENS-Lyon, initiating there the study of various research fields, such as dissipative structures generated by instability, granular media, sound propagation in complex media (effect of liquid-vapour transition on sound velocity and absorption in two-phase media), sound-vorticity interaction and its application to the detection of intermittent vortex structures in turbulence, the study of

surface wave In physics, a surface wave is a mechanical wave that propagates along the Interface (chemistry), interface between differing media. A common example is gravity waves along the surface of liquids, such as ocean waves. Gravity waves can also occu ...

s, which led to the first observation of a hydrodynamic quasi-crystalline pattern and

wave turbulence In continuum mechanics, wave turbulence is a set of nonlinear waves deviated far from thermal equilibrium. Such a state is usually accompanied by dissipation. It is either decaying turbulence or requires an external source of energy to sustain it. ...

. He initiated the VKS (von Karman Sodium) collaboration by proposing an experiment on the dynamo effect that led to the first laboratory observation of

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...

reversal, with many similarities to the reversals of the Earth's magnetic field. He is currently interested in the statistical properties of large scales in turbulence and in modelling the quasi-biennial oscillation laboratory, i. e. the quasi-periodic wind reversals in the equatorial stratosphere.

Distinctions

* Professor at the Institut Universitaire de France (junior) (1992–1997) * IBM Physics Award (1993) * "Batchelor lecturer" (Cambridge University (2004) *

Three Physicists Prize The Three Physicists Prize (french: Prix des trois physiciens) is a physics prize awarded by the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris and the Eugène Bloch Foundation. It is named in honour of the physicists Henri Abraham, Eugene Bloch and G ...

(2008) * Lewis Fry Richardson Medal from the European Geosciences Union (2009) * Silver medal from the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

(2009) * CEA Prize,

(2009) * Professor at the

Institut Universitaire de France The Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, Academic Institute of France), is a service of the French Ministry of Higher Education that distinguishes each year a small number of university professors for their research excellence, as evidenced by t ...

(senior) (2009) * Member of the French Academy of Sciences (2011) * Member of the Academia Europaea (2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fauve, Stephan Members of Academia Europaea Members of the French Academy of Sciences French physicists Academic staff of the École Normale Supérieure French National Centre for Scientific Research awards 1955 births Living people ENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud-Lyon alumni Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas University alumni Pierre and Marie Curie University alumni