These seemingly separate fields were dramatically influenced and brought together by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. de Gennes' work across different forms of soft matter were key in understanding its universality, where material properties are not based on the chemistry of the underlying structure, more so on the mesoscopic structures the underlying chemistry creates. de Gennes extended the understanding of phase changes in liquid crystals, introduced the idea of reptation regarding the relaxation of polymer systems, and successfully mapped polymer behavior to that of the Ising model.