Gérard Claudet (1939-2023)

News > Announcements | June 15th, 2023

The Cryogenics Society of Europe pays tribute to Gérard Claudet who died on 10 June 2023.

Gérard Claudet will remain a pioneer in the cryogenics field for his use of pressurized superfluid helium with the famous “Claudet bath.” Patented in 1974, and thanks to his relentless commitment to this technique, the Claudet bath was used under his supervision to cool several superconducting magnets such as: the first high-field "hybrid" magnet of the LNCMI in Grenoble, those of the Tore Supra tokamak in Cadarache, and on a larger scale those of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

Gérard Claudet became the head of the low temperature laboratory (SBT) of CEA Grenoble in 1989 and under his strong and effective leadership, SBT positioned itself as a reference in the cryogenics community. A talented engineer, he explored and opened new fields such as: the cryogenic ice pellets injectors for the Tokamaks, the cryogenic targets for the Laser Mega Joule project (LMJ), the cryogenic architecture of the ITER project and he also initiated the work on small cryocoolers in particular for space applications.

Author of numerous scientific articles, Gérard received the CEA Scientific Prize in 1997 for his innovative work on superfluid helium and the ICEC Mendelssohn International Prize in 2002 for his lifetime contributions to cryogenics.