Professor Jean-Pierre Hansen

Jean-Pierre Hansen FRS gained a PhD from Paris-Sud 11 University, and began working as a staff scientist for the French National Centre for Scientific Research. A year later he moved to the United States to do postdoctoral work at Cornell University before moving back to France to work as an associate professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University where he became a full professor.

In 1986 he became research director at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and founded the physics laboratory there. In 1990 the French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Grand Prix de l'Etat for his work, and he moved to Cambridge University  in 1997 and became Professor of Chemistry.

The Société Française de Physique awarded him their Prix Special in 1998, and in 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The European Physical Society awarded him their first Liquid Matter Prize in 2005, and in 2006 the Royal Society awarded him the Rumford Medal.

In 2013, together with Herman Berendsen he was awarded the Berni J. Alder Prize by the Centre européen de calcul atomique et moléculaire.