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Marcel Lesieur was born on July 12 th, 1945, in Poitiers. Son of mathematician Léonce Lesieur, who was Professor in universities of Poitiers and Paris-Orsay, he graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1968, and defended his PhD at University of Paris VI in 1970 on: ``Kraichnan's theory of turbulence-Application to the study of helical turbulence", prepared at ENS-Ulm (Dynamic-Meteorology Laboratory) with Pierre Morel. The same year, he enters CNRS as ``Research Attaché", and moves to Nice Observatory in order to prepare his `` thèse de Doctorat d'Etat" with Uriel Frisch. This Physics thesis, on ``Contribution to the study of some problems in fully-developed turbulence", was defended in 1973. It deals with advanced turbulence stochastic models applied to two- and three-dimensional turbulence in fluid mechanics.

In 1974 he gets the CNRS Bronze medal, and is promoted Chargé de Recherches CNRS next year. In 1976, he is appointed as Associate Professor at Grenoble National Polytechnic Institute (School of Hydraulics), and he creates a research team on Modelling and numerical Simulation of Turbulence (MOST) at Grenoble Institute of Mechanics. He spends one year at USC-Los Angeles as Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering (1982-1983), and is promoted Full Professor in Grenoble the same year. He gets the Thorlet award of the French Academy of Sciences in 1985, and the Seymour Cray-France award in 1989. He is promoted Exceptional-Class Professor I in 1992, then appointed as Senior Member of the ``Institut Universitaire de France" (IUF, Turbulence Mechanics Chair) in 1995, Exceptional-Class Professor II in 1997. In 1998 he receives the "Grand Prix Marcel Dassault" of the French Academy of Sciences, awarded to the author of important scientific or technical contributions in aeronautics and astronautics. On November 2003 18th , he is elected member of the French Academy of sciences.

Thanks to the use of stochastic models, Marcel Lesieur has done important discoveries in three-dimensional turbulence theory, such as the explosive growth of vorticity in a finite time, confirming a conjecture done in 1934 by the great french mathematician Jean Leray. He has also solved completely the problem of kinetic-energy decay, going further than the analysis done in 1941 by another famous mathematician, russian N. Kolmogoroff. In two-dimensional turbulence, he has checked with these models conjectures of american theoretical physicist R.H. Kraichnan concerning the inverse energy cascade. This has important applications in meteorology and oceanography. Afterwards, Marcel Lesieur has used the stochastic models to represent the effect of turbulence small scales within a large-scale numerical simulation. He was thus able to accelerate by a factor of hundred numerical simulations, by comparison to direct-numerical simulations, which are as heavy as those encountered in weather-forecast codes. Large-eddy simulation (LES) techniques thus developed are a powerful tool that Marcel Lesieur and collaborators have applied with great success to decipher the structure of turbulent fluids, either in isotropic turbulence, mixing layers, boundary layers, and rotating, stratified or hypersonic flows.

Team MOST within Geophysical and Industrial Flows Lab in Grenoble (LEGI) is one of the world leaders in this LES domain. It was able to show that turbulence is dominated by few coherent vortices which are born unpredictably, interact, and eventually die. MOST has worked for numerous industrial development programs such as: aerospace engineering (European Hermes shuttle, Rafale plane, supersonic transport plane, Ariane V engines), cars and trains, nuclear energy. LES carried out in MOST have also been used in meteorology for a new interpretation of December 1999 severe storms, as well as in oceanography to simulate ocean polar-water diving. This last phenomenon is a crucial link in climate evolution.

Guy Ourisson, Chairman of the French Academy of Sciences, awards Marcel Lesieur the Grand prix Marcel Dassault, on November 30 th 1998.

Marcel Lesieur is author or co-author of about 140 publications in international journals. He has done several hundreds of presentations (including several tenths invited) in symposia, courses and seminars in numerous countries, including the prestigious « Jean Ginoux lecture » at von Karman institute in 1993. He wrote a graduate course " Turbulence in Fluids" (Springer, 4^th edition, 2008) and a popularization book « La Turbulence » (1994, EDP-Springer). He was the main coordinator of three books « Computational Fluid Dynamics » (Les Houches summer school,1993, Elsevier), « Turbulence et Déterminisme » (EDP/Springer, 1998) and «« New Trends in Turbulence » (Les Houches summer school, 2000, EDP/Springer).

He serves on the 'Editorial Board of the following international journals: ``Dynamics of Atmosphere and Oceans", ``JSME International Journal (series B)", ``Flow, Turbulence and Combustion". In 2000 he created the electronic journal « Journal of Turbulence ». He was Scientific Committee chairman of ``Turbulent Shear Flows 11" (Grenoble 1997), chairman of the three national research programs: ATP CNRS ``Geophysical Fluid Dynamics" (1983-1987), GDR CNRS ``Computational Fluid Mechanics" (1988-1992), CEA-CNRS ``Turbulence, Interface and Modelling " (1996-1997), chairman of the scientific and technical group ``Fluid Mechanics and Turbulence" of the French Mechanics Association (AFM, 1999-2002).

Finally, Marcel Lesieur is father of 4 children (Stéphanie, Juliette, Guillaume, Alexandre) and grandfather of Léo, Basile, Maëlle and Lila.

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