Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, a physicist originally trained in solid-state physics and magnetism, shifts his attention from the late 1960s onward toward what he himself would name "soft matter": systems such as liquid crystals, polymers, and foams, whose collective behavior did not fit well into the theoretical frameworks developed for perfect crystalline solids or for simple liquids. De Gennes develops a unified framework that applies concepts of phase transitions and symmetry — originally taken from hard condensed-matter physics, including ideas closely related to the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity — to describe how the elongated molecules of a liquid crystal orient collectively, and how the long chains of a polymer behave in solution and in melt. His work shows that a deep mathematical analogy exists between seemingly disparate phenomena such as magnetic order, superconductivity, and molecular orientation in liquid crystals, establishing the latter as an accessible, laboratory-manipulable model system for phase transitions. The practical relevance of De Gennes's work proved immense: theoretical understanding of how liquid crystals respond to electric fields proved essential for developing and optimizing liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which would become the dominant display technology of the last quarter of the 20th century. His ability to build conceptual bridges between very distant subfields of physics — and to communicate those ideas with unusual expository clarity — earned him the informal nickname "the Newton of our time" among part of the French scientific community.