Analysis of Alain Perez in video lesechostv

Make the world a more understandable. "In summary this mission as is are mathematicians. This ambition is not new. Pythagoras was already thinking that "all is number" and Galileo doubted that "the book of nature was written in mathematical language".

Today, the familiar wear their lights in all sectors that manipulate large amounts of data and faced difficult modeling or simulation issues: cell biology, climatology, physical particles, genetics, financial forecasting, seismology... "We are perceived as one of the strengths of the France and an economic issue", says Wendelin Werner, Professor at université Paris-Sud, at the Ecole normale superior and holder of the Fields Medal in 2006 in Madrid. This year in Hyderabad, India, two other French won this distinction, equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which rewards researchers in less than forty years: NGO Bao Chau and Cédric Villani.

Strange planet

The France is the second largest of the world's research in this discipline, behind the United States. The hexagon has about 4,000 mathematicians permanent public jobs. More than 80 are teachers-researchers in universities and schools, 10 officiate at the CNRS and about 3 are in position at the national Institute for research in computer science and automatic (Inria). Every four years, the best of them are found in the Congress organized by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). Be part of the guest speakers and present its work to the world elite is undeniable recognition. This year, the French delegation to the IMU, the second in size, consisted of 26 researchers including 9 of foreign origin and 6 women. "The Fields Medal brings security to continue his research quietly," indicated Cédric Villani after his coronation.

Despite these repeated successes, the French company has difficult relations with material that has left painful memories in number of students. In the hexagonal educational system, math were odious reputation to be the judge of peace abstract and ruthless of the selection. "Mathematics is the selective material par excellence." "Control provides access to the Royal tract and their misunderstanding directs to others", said the former Minister of research, astronaut and physician Claudie Haigneré, who obviously is part of the first category.

In short, the familiar do not always have the rating in France, where it is not uncommon to hear: "I'm no math and proud to be." S e-heard, the Kings of the differential equation are of pure spirits who live in a strange planet where I do not want to live. "More than any other discipline, mathematics cannot withstand the à-peu-près." "They exclude any intellectual laziness in the reasoning," adds Claudie Haigneré.

Too elitist, little gainful

These requirements are probably a chance. This obscure complexity that surrounds them and preserves, mathematicians are from a deadly danger for all other sciences: the temptation of pilotage by power politics. We can't imagine a ministerial adviser to meddle in the theory of almost periodic Schrödinger operators, while it is not the street Descartes specialists who have a relevant opinion on embryonic stem cells. Reverse of the Medal, math do not attract the crowds. After the flons-media flons of Hyderabad, the Congregation will find silence.

The "success stories" and "business models" are rare in this small world, which does not juggles with billions of euros. However, in 1998, two young American researchers at Stanford University published a seemingly innocuous text: "The Anatomy of a large scale hypertexual Web search engine". These two friends were Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google now billionaire founders. But, overall, students Shun found discipline too elitist and little gainful. In addition, companies are struggling to understand and more to integrate these academics like no other. "The company has no good relays in academia", note Wendelin Werner. The financial crisis of 2008 came to throw a black veil on activity suspected now create voracious opaque instruments for traders.

"A strategic resource.

"The unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics" but appears every day in full sunlight. The past year, the President of Alcatel-Lucent, Philippe Camus, himself 12November and associate professor of physics, was a lyrical portrait of this matter who succeeds so well to the French. "I am confident that mathematics is a truly strategic resource." The mobile phone, sewage pollution, airliners, Internet, research, weather forecasting, the medical scanner engine, banks, the fibre-optic products and credit cards would not exist without them. "But, by intervening in the Symposium"Future math", the leader recalled that the image of mathematics remained always a little the same:" most disturbing, because they remain an instrument of selection, that attractive, because they are a field of knowledge. ".

Analysis of Alain Perez in video lesechostv.fr