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LOUIS EUGÈNE FÉLIX NÉEL

22 November 1904 — 17 November 2000

Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. Lond. 49, 367–384 (2003)

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 LOUIS EUGÈNE FÉLIX NÉEL
Downloaded from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/ on 22 October 2023

22 November 1904 — 17 November 2000

Elected ForMemRS 1966

BY JACQUES FRIEDEL1 FORMEMRS AND PIERRE AVERBUCH2

1 Physique des Solides, CNRS, and Université Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France
2 High Magnetic Field Laboratory, BP 166, F-38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

HIS LIFE AND GENERAL IMPACT

Louis Néel was from Norman stock by his father and from Lyon by his mother. He could trace
his ancestors to the middle of the eighteenth century. They were leading citizens of small bor-
oughs, his great grandfather a secondary school teacher. His grandfather, a chemist, showed
him how to make pills by pressing powders in moulds; he had many coloured jars in his shop
windows, one with a colony of leeches! Two of the chemist’s sons worked in the colonies, one
as administrator and the other as an army physician. Louis’s father, a civil servant in the
Ministry of Finances, also applied after a while for a post abroad, south of Tunisia, where he
met his future wife, a niece of the local French representative. They married in 1903.
Louis’s childhood was spent in many places, his father moving for reasons of promotion
and personal taste; he came back to France where he remained until 1913, and then moved to
Algeria, the hot climate being thought better for the young Louis, who was then recovering
from poliomyelitis; after World War I he moved again to Tunisia, then to Paris, the Rhône val-
ley and finally Corsica.
Néel thought that these constant changes of place and school, and especially the years spent
in the lycée in Constantine during the war, and also the contacts with his uncles, had opened
his mind to accept other people’s ways of living and thinking. He also thought that the colo-
nial system produced good things, such as the Pasteur Institutes where his physician uncle
worked for the most part; but he claimed that his maternal uncle, a watchmaker trained in
Switzerland, had a major influence on him. In his uncle’s shop, Louis liked working with his
hands and admired the beauty of mechanics; later he enjoyed the art of woodwork and of clock
building.

369 © 2003 The Royal Society

 370 Biographical Memoirs

His studies followed the classical model; while gifted in arts, he was more attracted by
physics and by mathematics, geometry in particular. His father, a lawyer by training, let him
prepare for the competition in sciences for the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and the École
Polytechnique. Louis was afraid of the sporting part of the latter—military—school, as he
walked lame without compensating shoes; but he was a strong hiker, as shown later when, dur-
ing the collapse in 1940, he rejoined his Paris base from Dunkirk, mostly on foot.
In 1924, he entered the ENS; like the other students, he had to learn some mathematics,
which at the time was becoming increasingly formal and which he found of little use to a
physicist. This would lead in France to the ‘Bourbaki’ treatise, the future authors of which
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were at the ENS with him.

The students in the ENS were preparing for graduation in the Sorbonne, but the theoretical
part of the teaching in physics was largely outdated; they also had some lectures in the ENS,
and he could perform experiments in the laboratory there: the pleasure of making things work,
of understanding each part of them satisfied Néel’s taste, although that laboratory was far from
modern, recalling rather a physics ‘cabinet’ of the eighteenth century. Néel valued the work
done in the third year, preparing a diplôme, a one-year research project. He found in the cellar
of the laboratory an electromagnet and proposed to use it to measure the Zeeman splitting of
some spectral lines. He had to build the whole apparatus, the best part of his learning in
physics. He always claimed to be an experimentalist obliged to make models because the
professional theoreticians were reluctant to work on his data. In any case, he was always cau-
tious about the traps that young physicists can fall into in their wish to make their data fit with
fashionable theories.
During his final year at the ENS, which was devoted to preparing the Agrégation (a quali-
fication needed to teach in lycées), Pierre Weiss offered him a position of assistant in the
University of Strasbourg. Whereas most of his fellow students had to prepare their PhD while
teaching young boys, he could immediately enter a university and devote most of his time to
research; furthermore, Weiss is one of the French physicists of that time still well known for
his work on ferromagnetism. Last but not least, Néel was starting his professional work out-
side Paris.
He valued the life in Strasbourg, a little less the lack of dynamism of the local physicists;
although the material possibilities of the laboratory were limited, he could realize the experi-
ments suggested by Weiss and spend some time studying statistical mechanics. That led him
to understand the meaning of the difference between the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic
Curie temperatures, and to present his PhD in 1931. In his dissertation one finds the origin of
his concept of antiferromagnetism, which he would develop in 1936 and which would be con-
firmed on MnO in 1938. It was the reluctance of theoretical physicists to accept this model,
together with his feeling of intellectual loneliness in Strasbourg, that developed his general
scepticism about the use of quantum mechanics in his research.
In the year of his thesis he married Hélène Hourticq, a teacher in literature and philosophy.
His life changed dramatically: he went to Clermont-Ferrand with a full professorship, as
Director of the Institute of Geophysics. However, after a short stay, which enabled him to
determine whether the move would be rewarding scientifically, he returned to his assistant
position in Strasbourg. He had seen that the material and financial possibilities in French uni-
versities were desperately low, the case of Strasbourg being exceptional. These few weeks
introduced him to the magnetism of lavas, a subject that he would study much later.
Back in Strasbourg, he returned to his researches in magnetism, making experiments to
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 371

determine the variation with interatomic distances of the exchange coupling. Just before World
War II, Weiss retired. Néel became a full professor and was a well-known specialist of mag-
netism.
When the war started, the French authorities decided to evacuate the whole of the town of
Strasbourg. Clermont-Ferrand had been chosen for the university, and the professors met
there, the research equipment having been forgotten by the authorities. Néel was not accepted
for military service, owing to his bad foot. He went to Strasbourg to retrieve the equipment;
he was then sent to Paris, at his request, to work with some young colleagues to build infrared
cells for the defence department. This was at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
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(CNRS) in Bellevue.
After a few months, the Navy asked for scientific help to protect ships against magnetic
mines and Néel was sent to the technical office of the Navy with the rank of group-captain.
The problem was simple in principle. Sailing mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, ships, sub-
jected to the vertical component of the Earth’s magnetic field, are magnetized vertically and
this was detected by German mines. The problem was to demagnetize them as quickly as pos-
sible. Néel, using the empirical laws on magnetism in low fields, discovered by Lord
Rayleigh, designed a simple system to use on a ship in harbour: a single turn of electric cable
was wrapped around the ship and an intense pulse of electric current was used to exploit the
quadratic term in Rayleigh’s formula. The mines of that period were primitive, so this first-
order solution worked well and the French Navy was—temporarily—saved.
In July 1940, Néel was in the headquarters of the Navy in Algiers when he was asked by
the Dean of the Strasbourg Faculty of Sciences to come back to Clermont-Ferrand. To stay
there with little prospect of research and with colleagues he did not appreciate did not appeal
to him. At the suggestion of Professor Esclangon of Grenoble, then in Algiers, he found that a
physics laboratory had been built just before the war and was practically empty. He obtained
from Professor Gosse, Dean of the Sciences Faculty in Grenoble, a nomination as professor,
without the right to teach!
Followed by R. Forrer of Strasbourg, he started working again, but in material and morale
conditions that were worse than ever. It would have been impossible to go on with his previ-
ous work; but in addition Néel’s assistant Louis Weil, back from the army, was forbidden to
keep his employment by the racial laws of the Vichy government. Néel obtained from the local
steel company a position of graduate engineer for him, and Weil finished writing his thesis on
the experiments made in Strasbourg; he also worked for the company and the result was a
technique to make permanent magnets without nickel or cobalt. Instead they were made from
compressed fine iron powders; this research led to a patent and a market valid for several
years. This encouraged the local manufacturers to work with academics.
In fact this was not new in Grenoble. At the end of the nineteenth century and at the begin-
ning of the twentieth, the university had created local schools of electrical, electrochemical
and hydraulics engineering, and even a school of paper industry engineering, which were more
or less independent of the university. This had been asked for by the City Hall to fill the needs
of the local expansion of industry, using the power generated by the falls and the creeks of the
Alps. In the electrical school there was a laboratory devoted to mechanical and electrical tests
to control and qualify the products of the local manufacturers. Néel became director of this
laboratory and improved his industrial relations, while also being able to make some meas-
urements for research.
However, his main activity was theoretical research into magnetic hysteresis: as explained
 372 Biographical Memoirs

more fully later, he developed models to justify Rayleigh’s empirical laws and to extend them
to high fields. This led him to consider the interactions of magnetic domains, with a view to
writing a book on magnetism (which was never finished). Wartime conditions, made more
sombre by the execution of Dean Gosse for resistance activity, did not prevent Néel from
keeping mentally and physically active. He published his results in local scientific reviews. A
young theoretician, Noël Felici, was transferred from Marseille to Grenoble and started to
work on his own in Néel’s laboratory. And, most importantly for the future, he hired Felix
Bertaut, a German refugee and a chemical engineer from the Bordeaux school, who at the time
was working in Paris where he was running the risk that the Gestapo might discover that his
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previous identity was Erwin Levy. On a more sporting side, he and his friend Esclangon went,
late in the war, to the town of Gap on their bicycles to chair the jury of the baccalauréat—a
trip of 120 kilometres, with a climb of 1100 metres to the ‘Col Bayard’.
At the end of the war, Néel was happy to stay in Grenoble. He was nominated ‘for one year’
as Professor of Experimental Physics, and the administration forgot the temporary character
of this decision. More important, a meeting of the local industry managers and of university
representatives proposed the creation of the ‘Laboratoire d’Électrostatique et de Physique du
Métal’ (LEPM). The purpose was to extend the activity beyond magnetism to other subjects
where cooperation between industry and academics could be most fruitful; the mention of
electrostatics was due to ideas by Felici on new generators. In fact, a company was later cre-
ated that produced, with some success, equipment for electrostatic painting.
The local proposal of a new laboratory was accepted by the national university authorities
and by Frédéric Joliot, general director of the CNRS. Néel started directing experimental stud-
ies with new students. Many were devoted to magnetic hysteresis, but insulating magnetic
cores were needed for high-frequency electronic systems, and experimentalists in Bellevue
near Paris and in The Netherlands started to study ferrites for that purpose. Néel generalized
his model of antiferromagnetism to the case of non-equivalent sublattices, and some experi-
mental work on these compounds was started in Grenoble, leading to the discovery of a spe-
cial kind of ferrites, the rare earth garnets, with various interesting properties.
A few years later, the LEPM was split into five sections, one devoted to magnetism, which
Néel directed, one on low-temperature physics directed by Weil, one on crystallography
directed by Bertaut (now a doctor for his analysis of powders by X-rays), one on electrostat-
ics directed by Felici and a new one on magnetic resonance; Néel, interested by the possibil-
ities of this new technique, had obtained positions for Michel Soutif and some collaborators
who came from the laboratory of the ENS.
In the middle of the 1950s, Néel was not just the director of a well-known laboratory; he
also directed the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, which regrouped all the engineering
schools—a school of electronics was added to the others at that time, shortly followed by one
on computer science. He had been elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1954, and he was
thought of as one of the major personalities of the city, as important as Paul-Louis Merlin, the
president of the Merlin–Gérin industries, a thriving local company of electrical engineering
equipment. Merlin was also the president of the recently created Alliance Universitaire
Grenobloise, a non-profit organization devoted to enhancing the collaboration between uni-
versity and industry. But the most spectacular development was yet to come.
A national policy of expansion of the universities had not yet started, but there was some
money to develop the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique; and Néel obtained approval for a
new research centre to be located in Grenoble. In preparation, a section of nuclear engineer-
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 373

ing was added to the school of electrotechnics, some nuclear physicists came to Grenoble and
research in that field started. But the building of the Centre d’Études Nucléaires de Grenoble
(CENG) was the most spectacular result of Néel’s contribution to the local expansion. Néel
became director of the CENG, taking on this responsibility with the help of some colleagues.
He was interested mainly in the scientific programmes, which were complementary to those
of the university and the CNRS laboratory. He did not especially encourage studies in mag-
netism but in contrast took this occasion to introduce to Grenoble valuable research activities
in domains that, because of the limited means of a small university, had been more or less neg-
lected before. The increasing demand for higher education and the government policy of
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expanding universities led to the creation of academic positions for young scientists, and the
CENG offered them the opportunity to work with modern and expensive equipment. Among
other subjects, organic chemistry and biological studies as well as signal processing benefited
from this policy.
An important decision was taken when two young scientists, a solid state specialist and an
electronics one, working in laboratories of the CENG, produced a MOS (metal oxide semi-
conductor) transistor for fun. This success was communicated to their respective PhD advisors
and then to Néel, who decided to create the Laboratoire d’Electronique et de Technologie de
l’Information (LETI). This department of the CENG grew rapidly and took out many patents,
cooperating with the electronics school of the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble.
This was the origin of many start-up companies, as well as being the start of the evolution of
the Grenoble area as a centre of electronics industry.
During the 1960s, when the state policy to develop university and research was most effi-
cient, the Institut Fourier, where the physics and mathematics departments of the university
were accommodated, became much too small. A new campus was built east of Grenoble while
the CNRS physics laboratories moved west, to a new location near the CENG. Néel had as
neighbours the two scientific institutions he directed; he usually spent the morning in one and
the afternoon in the other. The city is still small enough for contacts with the university cam-
pus to be maintained, together with the many laboratories built there.
The two next institutions whose creation and expansion Néel took part in were the Institut
Laue–Langevin (ILL), an international centre to build and manage a high-flux reactor, and a
high-magnetic-field laboratory, a joint venture of the CNRS with the German Max Planck
Gesellschaft. Néel was no longer active when Grenoble attracted another large international
research centre developing the use of synchrotron radiation for Europe (ESRF). It is clear that,
in such a context, the pressure of administrative work was constantly increasing; beyond his
local responsibilities, he had been nominated as a representative of France in the Scientific
Council of NATO, as Chairman of the Conseil Supérieur de Sureté Nucléaire, and as a mem-
ber of many boards of trustees, among them the French Scientific Defence Council. However,
Néel kept a large part of his time for research direction; and when attending scientific meet-
ings and seminars he always made incisive remarks, making it clear that his experience in
research kept him aware of the progress of science. Nobody in Grenoble was surprised when,
in 1970, he became a Nobel laureate.
Five years later he had to retire; this he did immediately, to live in Meudon near Paris and
also near the Bellevue laboratory of his friend C. Guillaud. He was alone: he had lost his wife
the year before and lived away from his three children; one of his two daughters died after-
wards. His wish to become Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences was not fulfilled,
and his difficulty in walking kept him increasingly at home, maintaining contact with the
 374 Biographical Memoirs

world by mail and through the regular visits of some of his friends and collaborators. He then
took the time to read classical philosophers such as Spinoza and to try to solve diophantine
problems on a computer, always answering with much cleverness the letters of his former stu-
dents, collaborators and colleagues, especially on points of physics. But his long life caused
him see all his friends die before him, and he did not like the present evolution of scientific
activity, as well as the outcome of 1968, a story he had not approved of. All this made him
critical and sad, as is evident sometimes in his memoirs.
In 1999 he broke a leg, recovered with difficulty, and left Meudon to live in Brive with his
daughter. In spite of his bad health he gave a long interview to the Grenoble TV station for
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1 January 2000; a second meeting with a representative of the Grenoble division of the CNRS
was also recorded. He spoke with difficulty on the first one, but better in the second: his mind
had not suffered from age. A few months later he had a heart attack, and he died a few days
afterwards.
Néel was modest and warm in private, with people he really liked, but in general he was
rather shy and somewhat lonely in his professional career. ‘He had indeed a wonderfully orig-
inal and subtle mind, together with a prodigious ambition and willpower’ (Noël Felici). He
was said to have had only simple ideas, one of them a tendency to serious and quiet work. But
when he had made up his mind about a task to be done, choosing always realistic ones, noth-
ing could stop him. In numerous discussions with colleagues, he was never tired and said that
the best way to win was to wait for the tiredness of others. But if he was a hard fighter in Paris
meetings, in Grenoble he was simple: he never gave orders, and nobody could imagine not
obeying.
Although his work took precedence for him over all other activities, he found some dis-
tractions, chiefly—when he was young—billiards or hiking. Later, he only spent some time in
the country. A native of Lyon, he valued good food and wines and liked cooking as an ama-
teur. ‘In the “coq au Chambertin”, it is the Chambertin that counts’, he was known to say. He
was able to take two meals in succession when necessary and his competitions of oyster tast-
ing with Francis Perrin, Haut Commissaire of the Atomic Energy Commission, were famous.
‘Without the stomach I have, I would never had the career I had’ (Bernard Dreyfus). He did
not like de Gaulle, but the last straw was when whisky was replaced by cognac in official
receptions.
His weekly journeys on the night train (eight hours) to Paris were made on ordinary seats,
and his integrity went so far as never himself to sign his travelling orders when on business.
Madame Néel indeed said that her husband was a ‘monstre d’équilibre’. He was never tired or
desperate. In the 1950s, he was able to finish writing a paper at his desk in the few minutes
between two visitors or in the meetings of the Faculty: he listened, spoke little and did not like
to waste his time. Delegating many tasks to his collaborators, he was quiet, and seemed always
to have time owing to a strong organization in running his scientific empire.
He had been in the Catholic religion and had married a Catholic coming from a family
belonging to the Reformed Church, but he presented himself broadly as an agnostic.
Nevertheless he asked for a religious ceremony to be performed, after his death, in the St Louis
church in Grenoble.
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 375

RESEARCH ACTIVITY
To analyse in some detail Néel’s personal contribution to research presents some difficulties.
His impact on the development of magnetism has been important and many-sided. However,
the interruption of the war, after a formation period in Strasbourg without theoretical contacts,
made him something of a lone figure, relying on his own intuition or simple models, a way of
research that he kept after the war for the fields he was personally involved in: he then had
many young people to develop materials, instruments and experiments for him, but had few
of his direct students to develop his theoretical approach. This is the more remarkable because
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his main aim was to attack magnetic problems from a simple phenomenological point of view,
using mostly simple concepts and mesoscopic scale, as did the physical chemists and
metallurgists at the beginning of the twentieth century; this mesoscopic scale was later sys-
tematically used by people such as P.-G. de Gennes (ForMemRS 1984) for superconductivity,
polymers or liquid crystals. Starting from magnetic problems, Néel progressively developed
Grenoble as a major centre for research in many sciences. This he did with people he trusted
scientifically, in fields from biology to applied semiconductors, the importance of which he
could gauge and appreciate himself but in a general way.
Like many French scientists of his generation, Néel understood English and German, but
only spoke and published in French, with few exceptions. The war period was not favourable
to the propagation and discussion of his scientific results. Thus, his long invited paper to the
1939 international magnetic conference in Strasbourg was not published until May 1940 in
Paris, in French as was the whole of the conference (7)*; it is now known by few people and
is not reproduced in the collection of his works published in 1978 (40). His war work appeared
only as a technical note published by the French Navy (8). His first research activity in the
1940–44 period, on permanent magnets, was covered by a non-committal patent (28) and Néel
published little and mostly in a local scientific journal. He also gave only two scientific
speeches, one in 1940 to a general public on his applied work of the time and the other in 1942
at Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris on his general views on magnetism. This and many other
signs of his activity of the time can be traced only in his own memoirs (39) and in his personal
notes (‘Papiers personnels’ and a note containing a full list of his publications), left by him to
the archives of the Academy of Sciences in Paris.
This background explains why Néel was only beginning to be known internationally just
before the war but emerged rapidly just after it with his laboratory as a major centre in mag-
netism and, from that basis, attracted several major scientific developments. These two
phases—before and after 1944—will be analysed separately. The emphasis will be on the evo-
lution of Néel’s points of view rather than on the details of his work.

Prolegomena: a burgeoning scientist (1928–44)

When Néel arrived in Strasbourg to prepare his thesis with Weiss, he found a well-established
centre of research in magnetism, in the only French provincial university of that time that was
well provided with teaching posts and with a minimum of equipment and technicians.
Redeveloped after World War I, the university was staffed with a number of relatively young
people of quality. Many of them would be known later internationally, whether in mathemat-
ics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. Of the staff members, one of the most

* Numbers in this form refer to the bibliography at the end of the text.
 376 Biographical Memoirs

impressive in magnetism was Edmond Bauer, a physical chemist well versed in the recent
developments of physics, both quantum and statistical. His general mastery of the current
problems of magnetism was shown at the 1939 Strasbourg conference of magnetism (7),
where he delivered a long and still interesting introduction, prepared in one night to replace
the indisposed Paul Langevin, with whom he had gone to work in Paris some years before: he
is also known for a long paper with F. London on the quantum theory of measurement.
Weiss was known mostly for two fundamental ideas in magnetism: the concept of magnetic
domains, within which magnetism was constant in strength and direction: and that of the
molecular field (Weiss 1907a,b) proportional to the atomic magnetization in each domain,
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which led to the Curie–Weiss law of susceptibility above the Curie temperature Tc, thus:
C/(TTp), (1)
where C is proportional to the atomic magnetization and TpTc measures the molecular field.
This law was followed approximately by most ferromagnets, metallic as well as insulators;
and Weiss’s laboratory concentrated on a systematic analysis of the atomic magnetic moments
and coupling of transitional metals and alloys in terms of equation (1).
It is therefore not surprising that Néel’s work in Strasbourg concentrated on a critical analy-
sis and extension of equation (1), on the properties of the magnetic moments and of their cou-
plings. His later work during the war then concentrated on the properties of the magnetic
domains. These two fundamental themes formed the basis for the major success of Néel’s lab-
oratory in magnetism after the war.

Strasbourg (1928–39): magnetic moments, their couplings, their statistics

During Néel’s stay in Strasbourg, the ferromagnetism of 3d transition metals posed problems
that were still outstanding in 1939 (7).
Equation (1) was approximately followed in most cases, leading to average paramagnetic
moments at high temperature, of the same order as the saturation magnetization measured well
below the Curie temperature Tc; the high-temperature value of Tp was of the order of the
observed Tc. More precisely, the numerous systematic measurements made in Strasbourg
showed that the striking variations in the averaged magnetic moments of metals and binary
alloys, as measured by Sadron in his thesis (1932) and later published as the Slater–Pauling
curves, were reproduced with only small differences by the average high-temperature mag-
netic moments. The atomic moments are therefore fairly stable entities, with coupling leading
to the Tp (or Tc) of equation (1). This is the framework in which Néel worked.
The question raised concerned the microscopic nature of both the moments and their cou-
plings. Although the measured gyromagnetic ratio g, near to 2, showed that the orbital moment
is nearly blocked in the 3d series, the measured atomic moments were far from an integral
value of Bohr magnetons B, as expected for localized atomic d shells. This was explained for
the ferromagnetic moments by people such as C. Stoner, J.C. Slater and N.F. (later Sir Nevill)
Mott (FRS 1936) in a delocalized d-band picture (7); a satisfying description of paramagnetic
moments from this starting point of view did not exist at the time and is still qualitative at best.
Néel, rather wisely, did not try to add much to this problem and took the atomic moments as
experimental data, relying especially on the high-temperature paramagnetic ones.
In contrast, the magnetic couplings, deduced from the measured value of Tp, were many
orders of magnitude larger than what could be expected from classical dipolar couplings, and
it was not clear why the molecular field was independent of domain size if, as assumed by
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 377

Weiss in proposing equation (1), the coupling was long range. It was when Néel arrived in
Strasbourg that Heisenberg (1928) showed that exchange forces between two localized neigh-
bouring atomic shells led to short-range coupling of the right order of magnitude. This result
led Néel to think from the start that short-range magnetic couplings were dominant, although
Heisenberg’s remark did not really apply to metals or to insulating compounds. With short-
range couplings, equation (1) would be valid only in the high-temperature range, when the
magnetic moments are randomly oriented. Using admittedly crude low-dimensional statistical
models, Néel realized that, under such conditions, magnetic fluctuations around pure random
distributions should develop at low temperatures and that they would produce small deviations
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from equation (1). There is a strong parallelism here with the short-range versus long-range
order in alloys: Weiss’s molecular field was equivalent to the Van der Waals (or later the
Bragg–Williams or Landau) approximation, whereas what Néel was analysing were short-
range order effects similar to those predicted in models such as those developed later by H.A.
Bethe (ForMemRS 1957), R.E. Peierls (FRS 1945), J. Van Hove and finally K. Wilson. It can
also be said that Néel’s low-dimensional models were the first to consider critical behaviour
around a magnetic transition. When the subject became fashionable again, in the 1960s, he
took a PhD student to make new measurements of critical indices.
From an experimental point of view, Néel spent much time to show that the deviations from
equation (1) observed in most cases could be associated with the progressive development of
magnetic fluctuations, without having to assume a quantized variation with temperature of the
paramagnetic moments, as was then suggested by Weiss and his collaborators. Indeed, Néel’s
careful measurements in iron and in nickel showed no sign of the abrupt change of slope of
1(T) attributed to this effect: without ever specifying it directly, Néel effectively killed the
myth, then prevalent in Strasbourg, of the existence of ‘Weiss’s magneton’, and of angular
straight lines (droites coudées) in 1(T). These magnetic measurements were completed in
1938 by a careful analysis of the peak of specific heat of nickel, in which the magnetic fluc-
tuations were visible in the high-temperature tail of the peak, above Tc (6).
Néel also understood at that time that short-range interaction should lead to very specific
variations in the magnetic properties of solid solutions, which could be predicted in the para-
magnetic range if the moment and interactions were independent of concentration. This held
true particularly for dilute alloys of 3d elements in non-magnetic metals (3), even for
chromium and manganese, which, as pure metals, showed a temperature-independent suscep-
tibility at low temperature (2).
Néel’s thesis (1) was centred on these results; but they also contained an essential remark:
if the coupling between neighbouring moments was antiparallel, the magnetic moments of
simple (alternate) crystallographic structures could form two interpenetrating lattices of oppo-
site directions. The resulting absence of total moment in zero field then explains the high para-
magnetic susceptibility measured in chromium and manganese below a critical temperature
TN. Above TN the susceptibility should, to a first approximation, follow an equation such as
(1), with a negative value of Tp of order TN. This is the first mention of the concept of anti-
ferromagnetism, and indeed Néel developed the statistics of this case in the molecular field
(Bragg–Williams) approximation in 1936, introducing as a correction the magnetic anisotropy
(5). The first convincing proof of the existence of this new magnetic state was given by exper-
iments on MnO (Bizette et al. 1938), an insulator in which the large low-temperature suscep-
tibility could not be attributed to a metallic Pauli paramagnetism. A direct proof of the nature
of antiferromagnetism was not obtained until Shull et al. (1951) confirmed the structure by
 378 Biographical Memoirs

neutron diffraction. The 1939 conference still resonates with a controversy that had arisen
before the war between L.D. Landau (ForMemRS 1960) and C.J. Gorter: both had thought of
the possibility of antiparallel couplings but dismissed Néel’s antiferromagnetism on the
grounds that, as in the singlet state of a diatomic molecule such as H2, magnetic quantum fluc-
tuations should mix an antiferromagnetic state with a state of equal energy in which all
moments have changed signs. As analysed later by Néel for small antiferromagnetic crystals
(34), such fluctuations are ineffective for large crystals in the presence of any measurable
magnetocrystalline coupling.
The success of antiferromagnetism for chromium and manganese finally led Néel to pro-
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pose (4) a general scheme of short-range couplings in the 3d series that would vary from
antiparallel to parallel as function of the interatomic distance. There is no doubt that the lim-
its of antiferromagnetism in 3d alloys, and also temperature-dependent magnetostrictive
effects, can be reasonably predicted by schemes of this sort, although the present-day qualita-
tive state of affairs suggests that both the interatomic distance and magnetic coupling vary
with the filling of the 3d band to give an indirect relation such as that proposed by Néel and
others. It was to check such predictions that Néel put his new assistant, Weil, on a systematic
study of alloys of transitional metals between themselves and with the parent noble metals
copper, silver and gold.

The war; hysteresis and demagnetizing field (1939–44)

The war was, for Néel, a nearly total interruption of his research activities. Two successive
events gave him precious occasions to develop his research in a more applied context.
Néel and the French navy (Toulon, Brest, Dunkirk, Algiers, 1939–40). When asked to help in
protecting the navy from the German magnetic mines developed at the time by his friend R.
Becker, Néel quickly imagined replacing the lengthy process of using a permanent current on
each boat to create a permanent magnetic field opposite, on average, to the Earth’s magnetic
field, by a quick if less permanent method: use the hysteresis properties of Rayleigh’s law to
annul the magnetization of the boat due to the Earth’s magnetic field, by running a suitable
temporary electric current around the boat. Néel personally supervised the application of his
method in all major military ports in France; it proved so effective that he was sent to Great
Britain to tell the Royal Navy about his technique (39).
Ferromagnetic powders and aggregates (Grenoble 1940–44). When Néel settled in Grenoble
in 1940, his position had be transferred to the local university, with a condition that he should
not teach: as described above, he was obliged to make contacts with local industry, his time
with the navy’s having prepared him to do so, something exceptional at that time for univer-
sity professors. It was this contact, after the wartime episode, that propelled Néel towards
more applied researches in magnetism. To start with, as explained above, Néel launched with
Weil a research project of direct interest to the local steel industry of Ugine. As the alloying
additions necessary to make good permanent magnets were unavailable, Néel conceived that
pure soft-iron powders could be used. The idea was that, if fine enough, each grain of the
powder would be a single magnetic domain at low temperature, with a direction blocked in
iron more by the irregularities of form of the grain than by magnetocrystalline coupling. For
elongated grains for instance, the magnetization should be along the long axis; a talk by Néel
in 1940 shows that he was already working on this project, which required some specific con-
ditions: grains smaller than the width of a Bloch wall but large enough to avoid thermal
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 379

demagnetization by superparamagnetism, and the control of surfaces and contacts between the
grains to allow them to retain their individuality (18,19). This research led during the war to
industrial applications and also to some discussions with C. Kittel, who had the same idea
independently at the end of the war (Kittel 1946). Private notes by Néel (in his ‘Papiers per-
sonnels’) dated 1946 compare the two approaches, which differed only in the conditions of
single domains. This work had important extensions to the origin of magnetic hardness in the
more classical permanent magnets of industry (20), as well as to the permanent magnetization
of terracotta and of lava that has cooled in the presence of the Earth’s magnetic field (22, 31).
These applications were developed from his contacts with the geologist L. Thellier; and Néel
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was convinced that he was the first to realize that such remanent magnetization in rocks could
measure the direction of the Earth’s field when they cooled down after escaping from the
Earth’s mantle. This technique opened the way to the study of continental drift and of the suc-
cessive changes of direction of the Earth’s field.
An unfinished book on magnetism. The numerous notes by Néel from the war period (in his
‘Papiers personnels’) show that he was contemplating writing a general book on magnetism.
It is clear that this book was meant to describe his work in Strasbourg and his more applied
preoccupations of the time. However, the mere writing of some chapters sidetracked him to
new thoughts and discoveries, which were only partly published at the time. After a realistic
modelling of irreversibility in the Rayleigh regime, where hysteresis is attributed to the jumps
of Bloch walls on random obstacles, he tried to generalize to high-field hysteresis and to a
theory of the coercive field. The main factor for this new impetus came from realizing the
importance of the demagnetizing field of a magnet and of all pole field effects. This factor was
rightly neglected in comparison with the Weiss molecular field for the study of the micro-
scopic structure of ferromagnets. However, it became important in phenomena over larger dis-
tances, typically that of magnetic domains. This appeared clearly in the two applications just
described and will be treated at length in the next section in describing his postwar work. It is
clearly to this mesoscale field that Néel brought his most original contributions: this can be
judged in contrast with the absence of any reference to demagnetizing field in the review paper
given in 1939 by Becker (Becker 1940), one of the most distinguished applied magnetic spe-
cialists in Germany.

An established specialist in magnetism (postwar Grenoble)

As soon as the war ended, Néel was able to recruit students; Forrer went back to Strasbourg,
but Néel was able to keep both Weil and F. Lévy-Bertaut, who had joined his laboratory dur-
ing the war. With this help, Néel quickly developed personal research projects in various direc-
tions. We shall briefly analyse three chapters in this very productive, if rather brief, period.

Mesoscale magnetism
In a direct extension of his wartime work with Forrer and his own reflections (9–14), Néel
developed, in particular with his students L. Lliboutry, J.C. Barbier and P. Brissonneau, a sys-
tematic study of magnetic hysteresis. His aim was to develop a unified picture that would work
both for low-amplitude Rayleigh cycles in soft magnets and for the hysteretic properties of
hard magnets (26, 27, 29, 32). The problem was partly experimental—to characterize the vari-
ations of properties with the amplitude of the cycle, its frequency, the temperature and with
the average applied field in asymmetrical cycles. The physical origin of friction, usually taken
as being due to the motion of Bloch walls across obstacles, was extended by Néel to the
 380 Biographical Memoirs

switching of domains as a whole as expected for hard magnets; steel can also be considered
as a special case of diffusion friction, in which the internal carbon atoms can follow the
switching of domains by jumping to a neighbouring crystal site that is more stable under the
new magnetization (33, 37). However, the main contribution of Néel in this field concerned
statistical analysis of the evolving domains, both in interaction with the applied field and
between themselves through their Bloch walls or through their demagnetizing field. This obvi-
ously complex problem required simple but effective assumptions, in which each domain was
assumed to be in interaction with a random effect of all the others as well as with their own
demagnetizing field. Taking into account short-range order between domains, Néel showed
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that global symmetrical cycles produced locally asymmetrical ones, responsible for a system-
atic deformation of these Rayleigh cycles, which he called reptation. Within its limitations,
this model is still used in practical applications. Néel himself was conscious of its crudeness
and was eager to learn from other solid friction problems such as plasticity. It is likely that in
both cases progress will come from computer imaging.
This applied work led Néel to study more generally the three-dimensional configurations
of contiguous domains, in single crystals or polycrystals. This question, first approached by
Néel during the war, led him to consider magnetic configurations that included dispersion
fields; that is, a local excess of densities of positive or negative magnetic poles, a three-dimen-
sional extension of the concept of a cut field at a face surface responsible for the demagnetiz-
ing field. One can cite many aspects of such cases, from Bloch walls, forced by boundary
conditions or applied field to bend out of their dispersionless equilibrium configurations, to
the presence along a Bloch wall of a ‘Néel line’ along which the rotation of magnetization
across the wall changes sign: such lines are equivalent to disclination lines, in which the mag-
netization has an axis of rotation with an associated dispersion field.
An extreme case, already met during the war with powders, was the study of magnetic con-
figurations in the presence of surfaces, and especially in thin films. Major discoveries were
made that relate to the general topology of defects and dominate the present applications of
memories; Néel’s starting point was that, for weak enough magnetic anisotropies (including
the surface one (30)), the demagnetization field would lead to a magnetization parallel to the
surface, at least in a surface layer of the order of the Bloch wall and therefore in the whole
volume of films that are sufficiently thin. Examples of such studies are the configuration
predicted for magnetic domains around a non-magnetic crystalline inclusion, with its charac-
teristic ‘horns’ at the corners (15) and closure domains at the surface of single crystals (16, 17),
both types of magnetic domains that were observed in 1949 at Bell Laboratories. In thin films,
domains can be limited only by ‘Néel walls’, through which magnetization should rotate
parallel to the surface, thus creating a dispersion field. Such walls could contain ‘Bloch lines’
separating regions with opposite axes of rotation. This new type of disclination could, like the
Néel line of Bloch walls, contain singular points at which the rotation associated with the
disclination changes sign (38) (see also Kléman 1977).

Ferrimagnetism
In 1947 Néel extended his theory of antiferrimagnetism to the case of two unequal magnetic
sublattices. This theory of a new kind of ferromagnetism allowed him to explain the magnetic
properties of spinel ferrites, and expecially the hyperbolic curvature of the inverse paramag-
netic susceptibility versus temperature (21). This class of materials, which includes the iron
ferrite, the earliest magnet known, reveals itself as extremely variegated and technically
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 381

important: the low symmetry of the environment of some ions can lead in some phases to very
hard magnets with a large anisotropy; the cubic phases, often with low anisotropy, can be soft
magnets with low magnetic friction because of their insulating properties (23–25). Much work
was done in this field with Guillaud’s laboratory in Bellevue, but also at the Philips laboratory
in Eindhoven, as handsomely recognized by H.B.G. Casimir ForMemRS on the occasion of
the award of Néel’s Nobel Prize.
The best example of ferrimagnetism has been that of the rare earth garnets, studied in his
thesis by R. Pauthenet in 1956 after their chemical analysis and crystallographic structure had
been discovered in 1956 by Lévy-Bertaut and F. Forrat (36). This family contains most of the
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high-frequency magnets used for recording media but also some that are used most in high-
frequency electronics.

Instrumentation
The initial driving force in developing Grenoble as a major international institution, active in
many scientific directions, as described in the first section, was provided by Néel’s wish to
possess experimental methods of possible use in his study of magnetism. A short list will make
this clear and will point out some of his early collaborators in this context.
Techniques with neutrons (CENG, then ILL) and X-rays (ESRF). The initial motivation in cre-
ating an atomic energy centre in Grenoble (CENG) came from the wish to have a neutron
source to develop research on neutron scattering. As in attracting much later the interest of the
ILL, Néel relied on the scientific mastery and international reputation of Lévy-Bertaut.
High-field magnetic centre. The wish here was initially to study very hard magnets and also
to develop techniques of mixed classical and superconductive magnets. Pauthenet was in
charge of these two aspects, while the centre quickly broadened its interests by becoming bina-
tional, with a German director and research into semiconductors and biological materials.
Low temperatures. The initial intent was here to acquire a better knowledge of the behaviour
of magnetic materials, and especially the coupling of magnetic impurities in dilute metallic
alloys, a study started by R. Tournier under Néel, at a happy time when both spin glasses and
the Kondo effect would soon be developed. As well as the development of low-temperature
machines, superconductivity and then superfluidity were also investigated.
Magnetic resonance. Soutif’s group developed many activities in this field, such as ferrimag-
netic resonance in ferrites by J. Paulevé and Dreyfus; later there was work on nuclear mag-
netic resonance in metals and alloys by P. Averbuch and M. Minier, and also in rare earth
alloys and in frustrated magnetic systems by the brothers Y. and C. Berthier.
Thin-film physics. This was a recurrent subject of Néel’s; he encouraged Felici to work on it
during the war. Later he created a section of the LEPM devoted to these studies but had to wait
for progress with vacuum technology and techniques developed at the LETI to have suffi-
ciently controlled samples for magnetic studies.
Neutron irradiation. This was, at CENG, the realm of D. Dautreppe and his collaborators,
especially P. Moser. The CENG became a centre of excellence for the study of radiation dam-
age in metals and alloys. Two studies of major interest to Néel were the blockage of Bloch
walls by radiation damage and the creation under irradiation of long-range order in FeNi, with
a tetragonal distortion giving a high anisotropy (35).
 382 Biographical Memoirs

MAIN HONOURS
1939 Robin Prize, Société Française de Physique
1940 Légion d’Honneur, to the order of the Armée de la Mer
1951 Doctor honoris causa, Nottingham University
1953 Holweck Prize, Institute of Physics and Société Française de Physique
Member of the Academy des Sciences
1958 Member of the Academy of Soviet Union
1959 Doctor honoris causa, Oxford University
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1964 Gold Medal, CNRS

Member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
1966 Foreign Member of The Royal Society (1966)
1969 Doctor honoris causa, Newcastle University
1970 Nobel Prize, with Hannes Alfvén
1976 Promotion to Grand Croix de la Légion d’Honneur

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The frontispiece photograph is reproduced courtesy of CEA Grenoble.

REFERENCES TO OTHER AUTHORS

Becker, R. Aimantation dans les champs faibles et moyens. In Le magnétisme, vol. II (Ferromagnétisme), pp. 41–64.
Paris: CNRS and Institut de Coopération Internationale.
Bizette, H., Squire, C. & Tsai, B. 1938 C.R. Acad. Sci. 207, 449.
Heisenberg, W. (1928) Z. Phys. 49, 619.
Kittel, C. 1946 Phys. Rev. 70, 965.
Kléman, M. 1977 Points, lignes, parois. Paris: Éditions de Physique.
Shull, C.G., Strauser, W.A. & Wollan, E.O. 1951 Phys. Rev. 83, 339.
Weiss, P. 1907a C.R. Acad. Sci. 144, 24.
Weiss, P. 1907b J. Phys. 6, 661.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following publications are those referred to directly in the text. A full bibliography
appears on the accompanying microfiche, numbered as in the second column. A photocopy is
available from The Royal Society’s Library at cost.
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Phys. (Paris) 17, 5–105.
(2) (11) Propriétés magnétiques du manganèse et du chrome en solution solide étendue. J. Phys.
Radium 3, 160–171.
(3) (23) 1934 Sur l’interprétation des propriétés magnétiques des alliages. C.R. Acad. Sci. 198, 1311.
(4) (27) 1936 Propriétés magnétiques de l’état magnétique et énergie d’interaction entre atomes magnétiques.
Ann. Phys. (Paris) 5, 232–279.
(5) (34) Théorie du paramagnétisme constant; application au manganèse. C.R. Acad. Sci. 203, 304.
(6) (44) 1939 Chaleur spécifique et fluctuations du champ moléculaire. C.R. Acad. Sci. 208, 177.
 Louis Eugène Félix Néel 383

(7) (48) 1940 Champ moléculaire, aimantation à saturation et constants de Curie des éléments de transition
et de leurs alliages. In Le magnétisme, vol. II (Ferromagnetisme), pp. 65–164. Paris: CNRS and
Institut de Coopération Internationale. [A copy of volumes I and II was left by N.F. Mott to the
library at the Royal Fort, Bristol University; the libraries of several French universities have the
full text. A photocopy of it can be consulted at the Archives de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris]
(8) (49) Neutralisation. Publication no. 606. Alger: Centre de Recherche de la Marine.
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73–74.
(10) (56a) Théorie des lois d’aimantation de Lord Rayleigh. 1. Les déplacements d’une paroi isolée. Cah.
Phys. 12, 1–20.
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(11) (56b) 1943 Théorie des lois d’aimantation de Lord Rayleigh. 2. Multiples domaines et champ coercitif.
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(12) (57) Théorie de l’influence du champ démagnétisant sur l’aimantation anhystérétique. Cah. Phys.
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dures. Comparaison avec la théorie. Cah. Phys. 14, 69.
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nétisant sur l’aimantation anhystérétique et applications. Cah. Phys. 17, 51.
(15) (62) 1944 Effet des cavités et des inclusions sur le champ coercitif. Cah. Phys. 25, 21–44.
(16) (63a) Les lois de l’aimantation et de la subdivision en domaines élémentaires d’un monocristal de fer.
1. Différents modes d’aimantation d’un monocristal. J. Phys. Radium 5, 241–251.
(17) (63b) Les lois de l’aimantation et de la subdivision en domaines élémentaires d’un monocristal de fer.
2. Forme et orientation des domaines élémentaires. 3. Structure secondaire superficielle et
épaisseur des feuillets. J. Phys. Radium 5, 265–276.
(18) (71) 1947 Propriétés d’un ferromagnétique cubique en grains fins. C.R. Acad. Sci. 224, 1448.
(19) (72) Le champ coercitif d’une poudre ferromagnétique à grains anisotropes. C.R. Acad. Sci. 224,
1550.
(20) (73) Théorie de l’anisotropie de certains aciers à aimants traités à chaud dans un champ magnétique.
C.R. Acad. Sci. 225, 109.
(21) (76) 1948 Propriétés magnétiques des ferrites. Ferrimagnétisme. Ann. Phys. (Paris) 3, 137.
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res cuites. Ann. Géophys. 5, 99–136.
(23) (90) 1950 Aimantation à saturation de certains ferrites. C.R. Acad. Sci. 230, 190.
(24) (91) (With M. Brochet) Les coefficients de champ moléculaire des ferrites mixtes de nickel et de
zinc. C.R. Acad. Sci. 230, 280.
(25) (92) Aimantation à saturation des ferrites mixtes de nickel et de zinc. C.R. Acad. Sci. 230, 375.
(26) (93) Théorie du traînage magnétique des substances massives dans le domaine de Rayleigh. J. Phys.
Radium 11, 49–61.
(27) (98) 1951 Le traînage magnétique. J. Phys. Radium 12, 339.
(28) (—) (With L. Weil & J. Aubry) French Patent no. 979043.
(29) (105) 1952 Théorie du traînage magnétique de diffusion. J. Phys. Radium 13, 249–263.
(30) (118) 1954 Anisotropie magnétique superficielle et surstructures d’orientation. J. Phys. Radium 15, 225.
(31) (126) 1955 Some theoretical aspects of rock magnetism. Phil. Mag. Suppl. 4, 191.
(32) (150) 1959 Sur les effets des interactions entre les domains élémentaires ferromagnétiques: bascule et rep-
tation. J. Phys. Radium 20, 215–221.
(33) (151) Directional order and diffusion after-effect. J. Appl. Phys. Suppl. 30, 3S–8S.
(34) (162) 1962 Théorie des propriétés magnétiques des grains fins antiferromagnétiques: superparamag-
nétisme et superantiferromagnétisme. In Low-Temperature Physics (Summer School of
Theoretical Physics, les Houches, 1961) (ed. C. de Witt, B. Dreyfus & P.-G. de Gennes), p. 413.
New York: Gordon & Breach.
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 384 Biographical Memoirs

(37) (200) 1967 Traînage magnétique de diffusion et hystérésis ferro et antiferromagnétique. In Conference,
The Royal Society, London, March.
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(39) (274) 1991 Un siècle de physique. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob.
(40) (278) 1978 Oeuvres scientifiques de L. Néel. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.
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