- Warsaw-4-PhD School
- Doctoral studies
Jean-Louis Robert
With great sorrow, we announce the passing away of Jean-Louis Robert, retired professor of physics at the University of Montpellier and our longtime Friend, on September 7th. Professor Robert's professional career was closely associated with research on semiconductor materials, ranging from fundamental studies to practical applications. The close connection between research and applications was of particular importance to Professor Robert and led to the practical utilization of the results of the basic research in the industry.
In the late 1970s, Professor Robert conducted research on the magnetic freezing of donor states in InSb at the National Center for High Magnetic Fields in Grenoble. At that time, measurements were carried out in a large measurement hall only at night (due to the electricity costs powering the electromagnet!). This naturally allowed the young associate professor Sylwester Porowski, who was on a scientific internship in France, to engage in long, nightly scientific discussions with a group of young, passionate researchers from Montpellier. As it turned out, the research topics related to high-pressure studies were particularly interesting to them, and nothing could prevent Professor Robert from establishing closer cooperation with colleagues from the High Pressure Research Laboratory of the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1979, the Montpellier team obtained a CNRS scholarship for a year-long stay of a Polish scientist in Montpellier. This allowed for the initiation of joint research on semiconductors under high hydrostatic pressure. In the following years, thanks to Professor Robert's efforts, a lecturer position was created at the University of Montpellier, specifically dedicated to the needs of our collaboration and guaranteed to a candidate proposed by Unipress. Over the years, numerous researchers from Unipress and later the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw took advantage of this position for the long-term stay in the Montpellier laboratory, enabling the intensive development of various joint research projects. Some of them culminated in the defense of doctoral theses. Another facet of our collaboration was, initiated by Professor Robert, the student exchange program with the University Technological Institute of Montpellier University, which lasted many years.