Marc Julia was a French chemist and the winner of the 1990 CNRS Gold Medal in chemistry. He discovered the Julia olefination

Julia olefination

The Julia olefination is the chemical reaction of phenyl sulfones with aldehydes to give alkenes after alcohol functionalization and reductive elimination using sodium amalgam or SmI2...

  reaction in 1973.

Biography

Julia was born in 1922 in Paris as son of the renown mathematician Gaston Julia

Gaston Julia

Gaston Maurice Julia was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by French mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot; the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related....

. Julia studied at the École Normale Supérieure

École Normale Supérieure

The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

 physics and after receiving his diploma he joined the group of Ian Heilbron

Ian Heilbron

Sir Ian Morris Heilbron DSO FRS was a British chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society . He was knighted in 1946...

 at the Imperial College London

Imperial College London

Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, specialising in science, engineering, business and medicine...

 where he received his first PhD. After being back to France he changed his subject to chemistry and he subsequently received his second PhD for work with Georges Dupont.

Further reading