EPJ A Highlight - Celebrating the impacts of Jacques Raynal’s work in the development of nuclear reaction formalism, codes and analysis
- Details
- Published on 08 November 2021

This topical article edition of EPJ A is dedicated to the memory of French nuclear physicist Jacques Raynal, who passed away on April 10th, 2020.
It illustrates, through a series of peer-reviewed articles, the various facets of what Raynal and his colleagues accomplished, as well as the profound influence of his results in several domains of nuclear reactions, both for theory formalism and for the analysis and understanding of experimental observables. The articles also demonstrate how his work paved the way for the future development of concepts and numerical codes for nuclear reaction calculations.
In 1959, Jacques Raynal joined the Department of Mathematical Physics, which later became the division of Theoretical Physics (SPhT, now IPhT), at the CEA Saclay (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique), where he obtained his PhD (1964) and worked until his retirement in 1996. Afterwards he served as a scientific advisor to the CEA, while continuing his own scientific work. From a practical, technical and numerical standpoint, the nuclear reaction codes he elaborated (from his relativistic coupled channel code ECIS) were the foundations of a series of extended codes that are now used in laboratories around the world, and in particular at the IAEA in Vienna, for the calculation of nuclear data evaluations.
His whole life, which was intertwined with his scientific career until the end, was devoted to nuclear research. With his diligence, blend of curiosity and enthusiasm, and his rigorous mathematical language for physics problems, Jacques Raynal was the perfect combination: a theorist capable of addressing the fundamental questions of nuclear reactions and of making progress in solving problems of nuclear dynamics.
The articles in this issue highlight his global influence and the legacy of his work. The authors also pay tribute to how he interacted with his colleagues and the friendships he shared with them. He was invited by various international laboratories to teach on using his codes for the phenomenological analysis of experimental data. From Havana to Vienna and Bucharest, from Saclay and Hamburg to Tokyo, the sun never sets on the countless versions of the ECIS code now being used around the globe.
Open calls for papers
-
EPJ A Topical Collection devoted to the legacy of Peter Schuck
-
EPJ A Topical Collection: Radiative Corrections: From Medium to High Energy Experiments
-
EPJ A Topical Collection: Short-Range Correlations and the EMC Effect
-
EPJ A Topical Issue: Heavy and Super-Heavy Nuclei and Elements: Production and Properties
-
EPJ B Topical Issue: Extreme Value Statistics and Search in Biology: Theory and Simulations
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Electron and Positron Interactions and Their Applications: a tribute to Professor Michael Brunger
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Dynamics and Photodynamics: from isolated molecules to the condensed phase
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Physics of Ionized Gases and Spectroscopy of Isolated Complex Systems: Fundamentals and Applications (2022)
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Quantum Walks and applications
-
EPJ E Topical Issue: 50 years of Small Angle Neutron Scattering at the ILL in Grenoble
-
EPJ E Topical Issue: Festschrift in honor of Philip (Fyl) Pincus
-
EPJ E Topical Issue: Novel Molecular Materials and Devices from Functional Soft Matter
-
EPJ H Special Issue: History for Physics: Contextualizing modern developments in the foundations of quantum theory
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Advances in cryogenic detectors for dark matter, neutrino physics and astrophysics
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Citizen science for physics: From Education and Outreach to Crowdsourcing fundamental research
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Focus Point on Higher Derivatives in Quantum Gravity: Theory, Tests, Phenomenology
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: The Magic of Glass
-
EPJ Quantum Technology - Open Calls for Papers
-
EPJ ST Special Issue Celestial Mechanics: new discoveries and challenges for space exploration
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Application of Fractional-Calculus in Physical Systems
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Machine Learning for quantum many-body systems
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Molecular and Cellular Mechanics
-
EPJ Techniques and Instrumentation - Open Calls for Papers