Georges Calas

Georges Calas is professor of mineralogy at the Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University and a senior member of University Institute of France.

Calas was educated at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud where he graduated in natural sciences and at Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University where he received his doctorate.

Prior to his role at the Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University, Calas was full professor (1981–2001) at Paris Diderot University where he chaired the Department of Earth Sciences. He has been Allan Cox visiting professor at Stanford University. He studies spectroscopy and crystal chemistry of minerals, structural properties of glasses and melts, radiation damage in minerals and glasses and structure–property relationships in natural and synthetic/industrial materials. He is also recognized in the field of the nuclear waste management and heavy metal pollution. From 2005 to 2008, he was Associate member of the Stanford Environmental Molecular Science Institute at Stanford University. He held the Chair Sustainable Development– Environment, energy and society at Collège de France in 2014–2015. The topic of the lectures was: “ Mineral Resources – A Major Challenge in the Context of Sustainable Development".

Calas chairs a research funding network in the Île-de-France Region. He is Principal Editor of Elements: An International Magazine of Mineralogy, Geochemistry, and Petrology. He was chair of the Commission on Physics of Minerals at the International Mineralogical Association. He is a member of Academia Europaea and a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has received numerous awards for his work including the Ivan Peyches and Dolomieu prizes of the French Academy of Sciences and the Mineralogical Society-Schlumberger Award of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Additionally, Calas is a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Society of Glass Technology, the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society.

• Les ressources minérales, enjeu majeur du développement durable , Paris, Collège de France/Éditions Fayard, 2015, 88 p.