Pierre Gilles de Gennes

PierreGilles de Gennes was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.

He was born in Paris, France, and was homeschooled to the age of 12. By the age of 13, he had adopted adult reading habits and was visiting museums. Later, de Gennes studied at the cole Normale Suprieure. After leaving the cole in 1955, he became a research engineer at the Saclay center of the Commissariat lnergie Atomique, working mainly on neutron scattering and magnetism, with advice from A. Abragam and Jacques Friedel. He defended his Ph.D. in 1957.

Source: Wikipedia