Rouxel studied at the
University of Rennes and the
University of Bordeaux, where he received his PhD in 1961 under
Paul Hagenmuller on two classes of aluminum compounds. After that he was an assistant in Bordeaux and after military service in
Algeria between 1962 and 1963, he went to the newly founded laboratory for solid state chemistry (today named after him) at the
University of Nantes. There he became an assistant professor in 1964 and a professor in 1968. From 1986 to 1998 he was scientific advisor at
Rhône-Poulenc. In 1988 he became director of the Institute for Materials (Institut des Matériaux, which arose from the Institute for Solid State Chemistry) in Nantes, which he remained until his death in 1998. From 1991 to 1996, he was a professor at the
Institut Universitaire de France. From 1994 to 1995, he was a professor at the
École normale supérieure de Lyon and from 1997 until his death he was a professor of solid state chemistry at the
Collège de France. He synthesized and characterized numerous solids in low dimensions (that is, one or two dimensions) and explored the properties of one-dimensional inorganic chains, such as the phase transition to charge density waves. Another area of research was incommensurable structures in solids and the connection between chemistry and electronic band structure in solids. He studied the mechanisms of anionic polymerization in solids and the competition of anions and cations in
redox reactions in solids. He is also working on a type of synthesis based on biological processes, which is called
soft chemistry (
chimie douce in French), after a word coined by the French chemist
Jacques Livage in 1977. == Honors and awards ==