Georges Saada was born on August 10, 1932 in Sfax, Tunisia. He left Tunisia at the age of seventeen, after high school and obtaining his baccalaureate. In Paris, he prepared the Grandes Ecoles at the Louis-le-Grand and Buffon high schools. He joined the École Polytechnique in 1952 and then prepared a thesis in metal physics. He also graduated at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications.
After military service, his career began in the army, which he left in 1960. Indeed his skills led him to scientific research. After five years at the Institut de Recherche de la Sidérurgie, as a research engineer, he chose to focus his career on university teaching. First a lecturer at the University of Lille, he participated in 1969 in the creation of the University of Paris XIII Villetaneuse where he became a professor in 1971. From 1973 to 1981, he was at the head of the Laboratoire des Propriétés Mécaniques et Thermodynamiques des Matériaux.
In 1981, he was appointed Head of Mission for Higher Education at the Ministry of National Education, Alain Savary.
He returned to the University of Paris XIII and joined the Laboratoire d’Etude des Microstructures in 1990.
Georges Saada played a pioneering role in the field of plasticity of materials. His work has had a major impact on the development of this discipline, with seminal contributions to the understanding of the physical mechanisms that cause deformation of metal alloys. His work has been recognized by the award of the Grande Médaille de la Société Française de Métallurgie et de Matériaux in 2008.