H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco visited IHES

Friday 11 June 2021, H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco came to the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, along with Patrice Cellario, the Principality of Monaco’s Minister of Interior.

After having been formally greeted by Marwan Lahoud, President of IHES, Emmanuel Ullmo, Director of IHES, Alexander Grimaud, Sub-prefect of the district of Palaiseau and Jean-François Vigier, Mayor of Bures-sur-Yvette, they met three junior researchers currently at the Institute:

– Veronica Fantini, an Italian mathematician specializing in geometry and mathematical physics, is currently a visitor at IHES, where she will start a post-doc in September;

– Vasilisa Nikiforova, a Russian post-doc in theoretical physics;

– Alex Takeda, a Brazilian post-doc working on topics related to algebraic geometry and mathematical physics.

In the main scientific building of the Institute, H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco was then able to discuss with Fanny Kassel, mathematician, a CNRS researcher based at IHES, and one of her PhD students, Balthazar Fléchelles. The Institute is thus part of a larger mathematical and scientific community: a founding member of Université Paris-Saclay, it works closely with several partners, including CNRS (the French National Research Center).

H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco and Patrice Cellario also visited the IHES library, where they were able to greet David Ruelle, a physicist and permanent professor until 2000 and now professor emeritus at IHES, winner of the Albert 1er de Monaco prize in 1979, awarded by the Academy of Sciences.

Finally, before going to lunch, they met Luc Illusie, a mathematician specializing in algebraic geometry, who was on site for the conference organized in his honor on the occasion of his 80th birthday (81st in fact due to the pandemic!) from 8 to 11 June. Luc Illusie is a precious and faithful member of the Institute’s community: he attended the famous A. Grothendieck’s Seminar during IHES’ first years.

After having had lunch at the Institute’s cafeteria, H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco and Patrice Cellario went to the Marilyn and James Simons Conference Center, where Thibault Damour, a physicist and permanent professor at IHES, gave a talk on gravitational waves. A good opportunity to get a sense of the scientific progress made since Albert Einstein’s first scientific work on this topic, with the most recent observational breakthroughs and their theoretical basis.