Lyderic Bocquet lauréat du prix Gentner-Kastler 2022

Lyderic Bocquet, 53, Director of Research CNRS, has always followed his own tracks. He was trained as a theoretician in fluid dynamics and statistical physics, and in 2002 launched an experimental group to study fluids at interfaces at University Lyon 1 first and then at ENS Paris.

Lyderic Bocquet brought the entire field of fluid dynamics towards new frontiers. He has experimentally and theoretically explored fluid dynamics at the boundary to statistical physics, nanoscience, chemistry, membrane science, and even hard-condensed matter. As a common thread, LB made pioneering contributions on the role of interfaces in fluid dynamics, from the macroscopic down to the molecular scale.

At first, he has completely unraveled the flow conditions near hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces experimentally and theoretically using both numerical and analytical approaches and bringing seminal contributions. The "de Gennes" type extrapolation length were shown to range from Angstrom size to several microns, a completely unexpected feature with a highly non-trivial physics.

Recent contributions go all the way to quantum friction. In a very daring move, LB used this know-how to investigate the flow through carbon and boron nitride nanotubes either assembled in membranes or even at the single tube level, an amazing "tour de force". Again, he obtained completely unexpected results, which he explained with beautiful non-trivial theory. Very interestingly, as a consequence to this work he developed the idea of harvesting energy from osmotic differences, showed world record "blue" energy transduction and created a start-up based on these ideas. More recently he has turned his interest towards ion transport in confined environment. The study in nanotubes and in monolayers confined between graphene or boron nitride planes is amazing.