History

At the end of the 19th century, the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine led France to lose the Chemistry School of Mulhouse, which was at that time the best French school in chemistry. In 1878, Charles Lauth, one of its teachers, tried to get from the authorities the creation of a "Grande Ecole". Its vocation was to alleviate the lack of leading-edge chemistry executives in France and to provide its students an extensive scientific education thanks to which they can adapt themselves to the fast technologic changes of the industrial revolution.

The Ecole de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles of Paris was founded in 1882, and was named ESPCI in 1948. Since the creation of the school, its founders have laid emphasis on the pluridisciplinarity of the education. This will is illustrated by the introduction of Biology in the education in 1994.
The free ESPCI's education allows students from various social backgrounds to benefit from the education of the ESPCI.

The School became rapidly the meeting point of high level scientists. In 1880, the Curie brothers Pierre and Jacques Curie started studies about the electric properties of cristals that lead to the discovery of piezoelectricity. At the end of 1897, Marie Curie started the study of uranic radiation discovered by Becquerel a year before. After a lot of experimentations in the ESPCI's laboratories, she showed that Pechblende was 45 times as radioactive as Uranium and Thorium. In July 1898, the Curies gave out the discovery of Polonium, folowed, in December 1898, by the one of Radium. This discovery allowed them to win the Nobel Prize of Physics in 1903. After her husbands death, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize of Chemistry in 1911.

Pierre and Marie Curie

"I would like to remind that we did all our research experimentations in the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie of the City of Paris. In every scientific production, the influence of the working environment has a huge importance and part of the results is due to that influence. [...] The teachers of the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie, the students that are graduated from there consist in a beneficent and productive environment that was me really useful. We did find our best collaborators and friends among the ancient students of the School. I am happy of thanking them all here."
Pierre Curie,
     Lecture in La Sorbonne on the 18^th of February 1904.

A lot of ESPCI gratuated students have distinguished oneselves, among them are Georges Claude (5th promotion), founder of L'Air Liquide, Paul Langevin (7th promotion), physicist and inventor, or Frédéric Joliot-Curie (39th promotion), founder of CEA, inventor of the first atomic battery, Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner in 1935 with his wife Irène.

 

Georges Claude

Paul Langevin

Frédéric Joliot-Curie

In 1976, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes became director of the ESPCI succeeding Georges Champetier (41st  promotion, Académie des Sciences 1960) and won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1991) . Nowadays a lot of scientists teaching in the ESPCI still contribute to the international reputation of the ESPCI, as Georges Charpak associate professor in 1980, who won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1992.

 

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Georges Charpak

       Exposition : "Radioactivity is 100 years old"