Portraits Jean Jouzel, ace of the ice Jean Jouzel is a 66-year-old paleoclimatologist at the Climate and Environmental Studies Laboratory (CNRS/CEA/UVSQ) in Gif-sur-Yvette, near Paris. In 2012, he received the Vetlesen Prize, jointly with US atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon (NOAA), for their work tracing 800,000 years of Antarctic climate history – the longest-ever record using ice core samples. The researcher is the first French scientist to receive this prestigious award, considered to be the equivalent of the “Nobel Prize for Earth sciences and astronomy”. He spent his entire career at the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) and served for eight years as director of the Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace, which brings together climate and environmental research laboratories from the Paris region. In 2002, he was awarded the CNRS Gold Medal, along with climatologist Claude Lorius – his mentor and a pioneer in ice-core drilling and glaciological studies – for their work on the relationship between past climate and atmosphere, recreated by analyzing the ice and air pockets contained in core samples. Jean Jouzel is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He is also active in raising public awareness of the impact of human activities on our planet’s climate. He is a member of the steering committee for the French National Debate on Energy Transition. Supercalculateur CURIE conçu par Bull pour le Genci. Vetlesen Prize winner Jean Jouzel Alain Benoît, a master of instrumentation Alain Benoît, a 64-year-old senior researcher at the CNRS Institut Néel in Grenoble, is one of the three 2012 laureates of the CNRS Medal of Innovation. With his team, this specialist in solid-state physics at very low temperatures designed technological processes for cooling detection instruments used in space, in order to enhance their performance. The closer these instruments get to absolute zero (-273.15°C), the more efficient they become. Alain Benoît has developed various cryostat systems using dilution refrigeration to reach temperatures near absolute zero, and they are now present in all types of instruments. For instance, the Planck satellite holds the record for coldest spatial instrument: one of its cameras stayed at -273.05°C for more than two years. Today, Alain Benoît’s invention is also used in the underground laboratory at Modane, central to the Edelweiss experiment aimed at detecting the mysterious dark matter believed to make up nearly a quarter of the energy in the universe. The physicist has also worked on “KIDs”, superconducting resonant elements used to manufacture high-resolution cameras. With a colleague, Benoît has patented a new dilution system for satellite cryostats, whereby experiments in space can overcome the limited autonomy of cooling systems. 53 Medal of Innovation laureate Alain Benoît 2012 A year at CNRS
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