Other Notable Deaths

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who won the Nobel

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering research on liquid crystals, died Friday in Orsay, a suburb of Paris, the newspaper Le Monde reported yesterday.

Dr. de Gennes was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991 for his work on liquid crystals, substances that have the properties of both a liquid and a solid, and are widely used in television and computer screens.

When awarding the prize, the Nobel jury called Dr. de Gennes the "Isaac Newton of our time."

Dr. de Gennes rejected the comparison with the English scientist, attributing the description to the "Nordic lyricism" of the Stockholm-based award's jury, the French news media reported.