Libchaber, Albert (1934– )

French physicist whose experiment looking at disordered flow within liquid helium revealed one process whereby chaos can arise. Until this experiment chaos had been a mathematical curiosity only. He later demonstrated a second route to chaos.

Libchaber gently heated liquid helium within a 3-mm wide metal cell and observed flow. Vortices formed and waves rippled up and down with each wave having precisely double the wavelength of the previous one: the period-doubling cascade. Ultimately wave flow becomes chaotic.

Libchaber was born in Paris to Jewish Polish immigrants. He was six at the time of the German invasion and his parents decided that he and his brother would stand more chance of surviving alone, posing as orphaned Catholics. After four years they were reunited with their parents.

After obtaining a degree in mathematics he moved to the University of Illinois to study with John Bardeen, but this was cut short by the French war in Algeria, in which he was drafted. Returning to Paris Libchaber began research at the Ecole Normale, where he conducted his influential experiment 1979. In 1983 he moved to Chicago where he continued to research chaos. In 1991 he moved to Princeton and turned his attention to chaos within biology. He moved to Rockefeller University, New York 1994.