Jacqueline Lenoble
1928-2025

The following testimonial is taken from an obituary which colleagues at the University of Lille (Céline Cornet, Jerome Riedi, Philippe Dubuisson) have written.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Prof. Jacqueline Lenoble, who died peacefully at her home on December 20, 2025. She was a pioneer in the field of atmospheric radiative transfer in the 1970s and the author of several seminal books that have become foundational references in the discipline: Standard Procedures to Compute Atmospheric Radiative Transfer in a Scattering Atmosphere (1977), Radiative Transfer in Scattering and Absorbing Atmospheres(1985), and Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (1993).

Jacqueline was also a highly active member of the International Radiation Commission (IRC), serving as its president between 1983 and 1988. In this role, she organized the International Radiation Symposium held in Lille in 1988 (IRS ’88: Current Problems in Atmospheric Radiation, Proceedings of the International Radiation Symposium, Lille, France, 18–24 August 1988).

After graduating as an engineer from Sup-Optique, Jacqueline obtained a research position at the CNRS and joined the Laboratory of Applied Physics at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Her vocation for atmospheric radiation emerged during her PhD in the early 1950s, through her studies of solar ultraviolet radiation received at the Earth’s surface and in the ocean, and her work on modeling radiative transfer in the atmosphere with S. Chandrasekhar. Following her doctorate, under the supervision of Y. Le Grand, she spent a research period at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in the laboratory of Professor Z. Sekera, a leading specialist in radiative transfer, radiation polarization, and the detection of atmospheric aerosols.

Upon returning to France, she realized that establishing a new laboratory while remaining at the CNRS in Paris would be difficult. Consequently, she accepted a professorship at the University of Lille in October 1960. As early as 1961, she founded the Laboratory of Atmospheric Optics (LOA), which she led until 1984. This remarkable achievement, particularly at that time, left a lasting legacy in atmospheric radiation science. The laboratory she created has since become internationally recognized.

After her retirement in 1998, Jacqueline Lenoble remained deeply engaged in scientific life. She continued her work first as an Emeritus Professor at LOA and later in Grenoble, where she maintained active scientific exchanges with colleagues and contributed to the writing of articles and books.

Her passing leaves behind the memory of an exceptional woman—admired and respected by all her colleagues—who reached the highest levels of scientific achievement and inspired the vocations of many young scientists, including numerous young women pursuing careers in research.