Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
veritable penchant for perfectionism produced some drawbacks: for example, his
desire to be as close as possible to the reality of things actually prevented him from
expressing his ideas simply enough to be understood by engineering students. His
continual questioning sometimes led him to present his thoughts in a contradictory
way, but his unrelenting concern with reality would also lead him to organize 25
three-hour lessons in the DEA program presented by engineers from industry, such
as the dam lessons with Gilbert Nury from EDF or engineers from CNR, the Rhône
River Company. Notes and documents from the EDF courses were archived into two
boxes that were recently being consulted by Jean-Jacques Fry, a student of Biarez
and one of the authors in this topic.
Among the research forums that Biarez supported with enthusiasm and himself
attended with assiduity was GRECO GEOMATERIAUX, launched in 1986 by Félix
Darve. In the Alpine village of Aussois, the entire geotechnical community from
France would gather for a week to discuss the recent advances made in numerical
modeling of geomaterials. This annual meeting proved to be highly beneficial for
both academic and professional engineers. The CNRS renewed its funding of
GRECO in 1990 after the initial four-year cycle and the organization has now
created lasting international exchanges in the ALERT (
Alliance de Laboratoires
Européens pour la Recherche et la Technologie
) geomaterials framework. The
GRECO has thus been able to continue through ALERT, which is building a
network of the best geotechnical research teams in Europe. The annual meetings still
take place each autumn in Aussois.
The GRECO experience gave Biarez an idea that was to occupy the rest of his
life. This idea was to produce a databank consisting of paper, video or numerical
formats that would group and synthesize the results from research on the mechanical
behavior of soils in France and all around the world. From there followed a series of
theses, through which he attempted to propose a synthetic view of soil behavior
(standard graphs, comparisons of sand and clay, etc.) by linking this view to some
basic parameters describing its structure (e.g. the correlation elements work of Jean-
Louis Favre and Said Taïbi). This produced the major correlations synthesis on a
little plastic card formatted like a pocket-sized credit card, which is still carried by
many engineers who find it very useful in their daily practice.
His pedagogy consisted of giving the student or the researcher an enormous
personal responsibility by leading him or her into very vast research fields that
involved dealing with quite audacious questions of related ideas. Biarez was
fundamentally interested in avant-garde scientific questions, even at the risk of
inviting uncertainty. As we mentioned before, some students felt abandoned in this
vast ocean of liberty. For those who endured the solitude, their research work led
them to successful careers in the scientific and industrial fields. Over a thousand
academics and engineers owe their training to Professor Biarez. He left behind him a
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