Professional Work
Jean-Pierre Petit obtained his Engineer's degree in 1961 at the French aeronautical engineering school ENSAE (Supaero). In the 1960s he worked for several months in a French rocket engine test facility as a test engineer in the development of the first nuclear intercontinental missiles SLBM. Because he felt uncomfortable within the military R&D, he preferred to integrate civilian research. In 1965 he was hired by the Marseille Institute of Fluid Mechanics (IMFM), a French laboratory affiliated with CNRS and the French atomic agency CEA, as a research engineer where he made his first studies in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). In 1972 he fully incorporated the CNRS after his EngD thesis defense. In 1974 he officially stopped experimental research in MHD and started working at the Marseille Observatory where he reconverted himself in fundamental research as an astrophysicist. However, he personally carried on his experimental research on MHD propulsion until 1987. Convalescent after many months of hospitalization following an industrial injury, he became between 1977 and 1983 codirector of the Calculation Center at the French University of Provence where he developed with students some CAD software marketed in 1978. He retired from CNRS in April 2003 but keeps working. In 2007, he founded a non-profit organization called UFO-Science to concretize some research ideas he could not experiment on while working due to lack of allocated funds at the time.
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