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Pierre-Ernest Weiss (25 March 1865, Mulhouse – 24 October 1940, Lyon) was a French physicist who specialized in magnetism. He developed the Magnetic domain of ferromagnetism in 1907. Magnetic domain and the Weiss magneton are named after him. Weiss also developed the molecular or mean field theory, which is often called Weiss-mean-field theory, that led to the discovery of the Curie–Weiss law. Alongside Auguste Piccard, Pierre Weiss is considered one of the first discoverers of the magnetocaloric effect in 1917.
Pierre Weiss made several experimental discoveries that led to the development of the strongest of the beginning of the 20th century. He worked at the universities of Rennes, Lyon, ETH Zurich where he was raised, and finally at Strasbourg. In these academic institutions he founded several renown laboratories.
During his lifetime, Weiss was nominated 23 times to the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In 1895, he won the title of maître de conférences (lecturer) at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Rennes. In 1896, he defends his doctoral thesis in physical sciences, related to the study of the magnetization of crystallized magnetite and some iron and antimony alloys, in front of the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris. His supervisors were Jules Violle and Marcel Brillouin, and the thesis jury comprised Charles Friedel, and Henry Pellatt.
Even when Pierre Weiss did take the mantle of professor at Lyon, he later accepted the ETH Zurich proposal to become physics professor and director of the Institute of Physics in 1902. In 1907, he published an important work on the nature of ferromagnetism where he introduced the concept of molecular field, a precursor idea to mean field theory. It was at this moment in his life that he met Albert Einstein and Peter Debye, also professors in Zurich. During World War I, he came back to France where he worked with Aimé Cotton in the development of an acoustic system for tracking artillery, known as the Cotton-Weiss method.
In 1919, Strasbourg was no longer part of the German Empire but returned to being a part of France. Even when the University of Strasbourg (as Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität de Strasbourg) benefited from important German investment, Weiss had to participate in several endeavors that had to be performed to reintegrate the institution to the French system (as Université de Strasbourg). The French president Raymond Poincaré declared that the University of Strasbourg had to outperform its precedent German counterpart. In this manner, many faculties and subordinate institutes were also created to promote research. In this environment, Pierre Weiss chose to become physics professor at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Strasbourg and director of the Institute of Physics. He also founded in Strasbourg an institute focused on the research of magnetism, similar to the one he founded in Zurich. He gathered in Strasbourg many of his collaborators from Zurich, such as Gabriel Foëx, Robert Forrer and Edmond Bauer. Some of Weiss's remarkable students included Swiss explorer and inventor Auguste Piccard, Spanish physicist Blas Cabrera, and Louis Néel, French Nobel laureate in physics for his work on magnetism.
Louis Néel, young associate from the ENS, arrived at Weiss's laboratory to prepare his thesis in 1928. He becomes his assistant in 1932 and succeeds Weiss at his position in the Chair of Physics at the University of Strasbourg in 1937.
As a widower in 1919, Pierre Weiss remarried in 1922 to physicist Marthe Klein. In 1939, Pierre Weiss followed his friend Jean Perrin to the University of Lyon where he died in 1940.
Louis Néel remarked the political fervour of Weiss, who supported Popular front which was badly seen in the mostly conservative population of Strasbourg of the time.
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