Christian Janot

Christian Alfred Elie Janot (January 4, 1936 – February 23, 2022) was a French physicist and materials scientist known for his work on materials characterization using Mössbauer spectroscopy and his physical metallurgy studies of quasicrystals and noncrystalline materials using neutron scattering techniques.

Education and career Janot studied physics and mathematics at the University of Dijon and later joined Armand Hadni at University of Nancy, where he received his PhD in 1963. Janot was one of the founding directors of the Jean Lamour Institute, a joint research institute between CNRS and the University of Lorraine. Between 1982 and 1991, Janot was appointed senior scientist at Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France, and retained a long-term visitor position afterwards. During this period, Janot also became a professor at Joseph Fourier University (later part of Grenoble Alpes University).

Janot cowrote several textbooks in physics and materials science. Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman wrote a foreword for his classic monograph on quasicrystals.

Honors and awards Janot was a French Government Overseas Fellow in 1981 at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. He was also a visiting professor at Sapienza University of Rome.