Jean Biarez: His Life and Work - Multiscale Geomechanics: From Soil to Engineering Projects - page 3

In 1947, the not-for-profit Association des amis de l'Université de Grenoble
under the leadership of Jean-Louis Merlin (of the Merlin Gerin Company) was
created.
In 1957, Jean Kuntzmann − then a young graduate of the prestigious Ecole
Normale Supérieure − established an applied mathematics and numerical calculation
laboratory with student courses. This complementary development allowed the
INPG to deliver a degree in mathematical engineering from 1960 onwards.
To meet the needs of the Serre-Ponçon dam, a soil mechanics laboratory was set
up by EDF in the Alpine town of Gap. The laboratory was closed, however, when
the dam was finished, even though it had been instrumental in training engineers. At
the same time, other huge earth dams were scheduled to be built, for example Notre-
Dame de Commiers and Mont-Cenis.
A permanent laboratory in the region was considered necessary, since
SOGREAH also required special competence in soil mechanics. The firm focused its
development on agricultural hydraulics and was increasingly solicited for design
studies outside France. The University of Grenoble thus found it opportune to create
a graduate program in soil mechanics − the first one in France.
In 1955, a soil mechanics laboratory within a larger laboratory of fluid
mechanics directed by Julien Kravtchenko, Lucien Santon and Antoine Craya was
created. The person put in charge of this new laboratory was Jean Biarez.
All these scientific facilities were initially shared by the University of Grenoble's
Faculty of Science and the INPG. In 1969, all the engineering schools in the area of
Grenoble became grouped under the aegis of the INPG.
At the beginning of the 1957 academic year, a first-time Master's program was
taught by Paul Anglès d'Auriac, Jean Biarez, Julien Kravtchenko and Lucien
Santon. A few words regarding the first individual: like Biarez, Paul Anglès
d'Auriac was a graduate of a prestigious engineering school, the Ecole
Polytechnique . He was also the scientific director at SOGREAH and went on to
become a full-time professor at the University of Grenoble. He is remembered by his
students as a remarkable teacher of continuum mechanics. The university was at that
time equipped with a Gamma Bull computer, both digital and analog, while
SOGREAH had an IBM computer at its disposal. This environment, plus the
lectures by Jean Kuntzmann, provided an ideal terrain for research into soil
mechanics which, at the time, was using computation tools called automatics.
Several PhD theses were produced that investigated the Sokolowski theory of
characteristics applied to plasticity equilibrium calculation. By combining