Loup Verlet

Who is Loup Verlet?

Loup Verlet is a French physicist who pioneered the computer simulation of molecular dynamics models. In a famous 1967 paper he used what is now known as Verlet integration and the Verlet list. He received his Ph.D. in 1957; he was a student of Victor Weisskopf. From 1957 to 1993 he worked mostly on the physics of the liquid state.

He has also written about the history of science. In his book "La Malle de Newton" he argued that Isaac Newton was an important transition figure between the medieval, mainly religious, world of ideas and the modern scientific way of analyzing physical problems. Newton had a foot in both worlds, as shown by the fact that his writings are not only concerned with mathematics and physics, but also theology and alchemy, a combination that seems bizarre to us today. The publication of Newton's Principia in 1687 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were the key events that brought the old era to a close and ushered in the modern one.