He has been awarded many prizes for his discoveries and important publications in the fields of mineralogy, crystalography, geochemistry and geology. His field of expertise is the crystal chemistry of minerals and the metallogenesis of deposits linked with basic and ultrabasic complexes. He is a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences, a holder of the A. Dumont medal awarded by the Belgian Geological Society, the Charles-Louis de Saulses de Freycinet prize of the French Academy of Sciences, the gold medal of the Science Faculty of Charles University, the same university's E. Booick medal and the R.J. Hauy medal of the French Society for Mineralogy and Crystallography, and in 1986 his scientific achievementsled to his being named a Chevalier of France's Order of Merit, the decree signed by President Mitterand. The list is impressive. Hours, days, years of hard work.
Every scientist needs to be free and independent.
I can't imagine having some scientific model, and doing everything so as to be the same. That would be plagiarism. When you do something, you have to be intellectually independent. And then it's a question of testing the truth of your hypotheses or ideas against those put forward by others before you. But that's as far as it goes.