Michel Gaudin (2 December 1931 – 4 August 2023) was a French physicist, known for the Gaudin model, in which a central spin is coupled to many surrounding spins.

Biography

Michel Gaudin was born on 2 December 1931. After graduating with the degree of ''ingénieur des ponts et chaussées'' (civil engineer), Gaudin joined in 1956 the CEA in

Saclay Saclay () is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is best known for the large scientific facility CEA Saclay, mostly dealing with nuclear and particle physics. Population Inhabit ...

to work on neutron experiments. Two years later, he joined

Claude Bloch Claude Bloch (18 March 1923 – 29 December 1971) was a French theoretical nuclear physicist. He authored over 60 published articles and made significant impact on the fields of quantum field theory, nuclear physics, and the many-body problem. Bl ...

's theorists' working group, to which he belonged for the rest of his career. In 1967 he received from the

University of Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...

in Orsay his doctoral degree in physics with thesis ''Étude d'un modèle à une dimension pour un système de fermions en interaction''. Gaudin's research deals with, among other topics, the quantum-mechanical description of many-body systems, in particular, spin systems. With M. L. Mehta in 1960 he published ''On the density of eigenvalues of a random matrix'', an important paper on

random matrices In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all of its entries are sampled randomly from a probability distribution. Random matrix theory (RMT) is the ...

. Gaudin received the Fondation Saintour Prize, awarded every two years since 1889 by the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. In 2019, he received, with two other physicists, the

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 201 ...

from the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

. Gaudin died on 4 August 2023, at the age of 91.

Publications

M. Gaudin, '' Modèles exactement résolus ''
EDP Sciences (1996) .
M. Gaudin, '' La Fonction d'onde de Bethe ''
Masson, Paris (1983) . **

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaudin, Michel 1931 births 2023 deaths French physicists Paris-Sud University alumni