Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Nobel Laureate in Physics 1991, died on 18 May at Orsay, France. He was 74. De Gennes visited ICTP as lecturer seven times between 1968 and 2006. He first came to the Centre to participate in the International Symposium on Contemporary Physics, which marked the official opening of the ICTP Main Building. He last came in 2006 to deliver a special seminar on “Some Thoughts on Friction.”