Jean-Pierre Demailly was a researcher at the Institut Fourier (université Grenoble-Alpes), which he headed from 2003 to 2007, and the recipient of numerous awards. His research focused primarily on complex analytic geometry.
A member of the Académie des sciences since 2007, he was also deeply involved in educational issues, notably in connection with the creation of the association GRIP (Groupe de réflexion interdisciplinaire sur les programmes), which he chaired.
Readers of Tangente will also know him for his interest in energy issues, including his advocacy of civil nuclear power (see the interview he gave us in issue 67 of Bibliothèque Tangente, published in 2019) and his talks on the greenhouse effect. In our pages, he made a notable contribution with an in-depth, richly documented and highly instructive article on Fourier and the heat equation (see Joseph Fourier, la physique mathématique in Ambassadeurs français des mathématiques, Bibliothèque Tangente 48, 2013, and especially La Découverte de Fourier : même le feu est régi par les nombres in Mathématiques et Chimie, Bibliothèque Tangente 43, 2012).
Finally, Jean-Pierre Demailly was a passionate advocate of free software and open science.
