Alain Le Mehaute


Alain Le Mehaute is a French engineer-chemist and inventor. He has written numerous scientific researches and academic literature on Geometry, Physics and Chemistry. Alain Le Mehaute, Olivier de Witte and Jean Claude André were the first to file their patent for the stereolithography process, but officially the title of inventor of stereolithography and 3D printing technology on the whole belongs to Chuck Hull

Career

Early in his career, Alain Le Mehaute was the main engineer in the scientific center of the industrial group Alcatel-Alstrom. After that he was a professor of mathematics at the University of Nantes, France and a professor at University of Paris-Sud. From 1996-2010 he was a director at the Institute of Modern Materials, ISMANS, Le Mans, France. He then took the post as a visiting professor at the University of Kazan after he had retired.

Patents

Alain Le Mehaute has more than 100 articles published, most of them on physics. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Alain Le Mehaute is an author of 23 patents. Including development of Lithium based generator, a device for attenuating and filtering vibrations transmitted to a user by an item of footwear.

Invention of stereolithography

On July 16, 1984 Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte and Jean Claude André filed their patent for the stereolithography process.
It was three weeks before American Chuck Hull filed his own patent for stereolithography. Due to issues with the patent for Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte and Jean Claude André, Chuck Hall is considered to be the inventor of this technology. The application of French inventors were abandoned by the French General Electric Company and CILAS. The claimed reason was “for lack of business perspective”.
One of the main sources about 3D printing 3dprint.com called him "the father of 3D printing".
Alain Le Méhauté in his interview describes the commitment that led to the patent application as arising from a theoretical commitment: mathematical order, a passion for transdisciplinary science, and the belief in the explosive commercial potential.
“At first, the team was flying high–until they learned that their patent application had been abandoned because their employers could not perceive the size of the commercial potential”.
Although Alain Le Méhauté expressed his regrets on the fact that the European Union awarded Chuck Hull as the sole inventor of this technology, he saluted Hull's work saying “I have great respect for Hull who had the courage to initiate the creation of 3D Systems in 1986. I also have a lot of admiration for the US’s ability to open doors to the future, even in cases where they can only understand theoretical approximations of the value. It’s something our French financial experts would laugh at doing, even today…We see the consequences of these attitudes every day and 3D technology is just one example of our collective failure”.