Jacques Livage was born in 1938 in Paris (France). He studied chemistry at the 'Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris' where he got a degree of chemical engineering. He then obtained his PhD in chemistry at the University of Paris in 1966. As a post-doc. he spent a year in Oxford, at the physics department (Clarendon Laboratory) in order to study Electron Spin Resonance. Back to Paris he joined the solid state chemistry laboratory of Pr. R. Collongues in order to develop ESR spectroscopy. He started a new research field on the semi-conducting properties of transition metal oxides such as V2O5 in order to make antistatic coatings for photographic films. This led him to publish many papers on the synthesis and physical properties of transition metal oxide gels.

In 1973 he was promoted as a professor at the University Pïerre and Marie Curie in Paris where he started his research on the so-called 'sol-gel process'. In 2001, he was elected at the 'College de France' a unique and prestigious institution founded by François 1° five centuries ago. He is also a member of the french Academy of Science and was invited as a visiting professor in many foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, Japan, India, Singapore, Hong- Kong, Argentine and Chile.

Working in the field of glasses and ceramics, Jacques Livage is well known as the founder of 'chimie douce' or 'soft chemistry'. Following the example of micro-algaes such as diatoms, he showed that it was possible to build a solid network under ambiant conditions via the polymerization of solute molecular precursors. This new chemical concept leads to the synthesis of bio-inspired materials such a organic-inorganic hybrids that fill the gap between glasses and polymers. Moerover, the mild conditions associated with sol-gel chemistry are compatible with living organisms that can be trapped within a glass matrix. These 'biohybrids' offer new possibilities for the synthesis of nanostructured materials, the realization of biosensors or bioreactors and the development of nanomedecine.