Goéry Delacôte

Education

At an early stage of his schooling, Delacôte skipped two grades. This encouraged his interest in physics, because he "wasn't mature enough to really appreciate the literature and poetry". He said that he became interested in physics because he considered mathematics to be too abstract, and biology to be less scientific discipline. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), with its highly regarded physics laboratories under Pierre Aigrain. He refused to take the compulsory postgraduate teaching exam, in preference to further education and research.

There, he gained his PhD in solid-state physics, after finding it difficult to choose between condensed matter and particle/nuclear (the two dominant areas at the time). He chose organic crystals as his research area because of a desire to help less developed nations: by his reasoning, condensed matter physics was the less expensive of the two.

Delacôte helped organise a science summer school for Algerian students in 1962. He then undertook his doctoral research at the University of Algiers, in association with the ENS and later taught at Paris Diderot University. In 1969 he returned to the ENS, where he became a professor after completing his doctorate.