Jean-Jacques Favier 

(1949-2023)

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With great sadness, we would like to inform the Crystal Growth community that Dr. Jean-Jacques Favier passed away on 19th March 2023 at the age of 73. He was a specialist in the fields of solidification and crystal growth and, from 1992-1998, he represented France in the IOCG Council and Executive Committee. Later, in the years 2003-2006, he performed distinguished service as the President of the French Association of Crystal Growth (GFCC). He was also the first French scientist to travel in space on the STS-78 NASA Space Shuttle mission in 1996.

 

Jean-Jacques Favier graduated as an Engineer from the Electrochemistry and Electrometallurgy school of Grenoble in 1971, subsequently in 1977 he obtained a PhD in Engineering at the Ecole des Mines in Paris and, also in the same year, a PhD in Metallurgy and Physics at Grenoble University. Working at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), he investigated solidification of metallic alloys and principles of crystal growth, especially through experiments under microgravity conditions. In 1985, he was selected as a potential astronaut by the French Space Agency, in a call reserved to scientists. In 1996, he participated in the Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) mission of the Columbia space shuttle, during which he performed over thirty experiments in physics. These included investigations from the MEPHISTO program, which he initiated and coordinated, that demonstrated the validity of the Mullins-Sekerka stability criterion with an accuracy of a few percent. In the years following his flight, he instituted programs linking industry, research, and education to Space Research and the more general development of Materials Science. His last startup company is devoted to the feasibility of a factory on the moon designed to produce photovoltaic panels from Si directly extracted from lunar sand.

 

We will remember Jean-Jacques for his warm smile and as a man who, while conceiving and executing his ideas and projects, would communicate his enthusiasm to all his coworkers.

 

The IOCG and the international Crystal Growth community join his family and friends in their sorrow.