New event organized by Les Amis de l’IHES on Tuesday June 2, 2026 at 5:30 pm (French Time) at IHES

Marie-Cécile Bruwier (egyptologist and Scientific Director of the Royal Museum of Mariemont (Belgium) gave an hybrid  conference in French, entitled:

“Heliopolis, city of the sun in Egypt”
A city with a history stretching back thousands of years, from the Pharaonic era to the modern city known as HELIOPOLIS.

The city’s history is divided in three major periods: in Ancient Egypt, It was one of the major theological centres associated with the Sun worship; the Christian tradition made it a place of refuge for the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt, which has attracted Western pilgrims for many centuries; at the start of the 20th century, its strategic location north-east of Cairo, close to the routes to the Sinai and the Middle East, led to the creation in the desert of an entirely new cosmopolitan city based on the modernist concepts of the time, complete with palaces, hotels, a racecourse, an airport…

This lecture was followed by a friendly drink.

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Next conference: Wednesday October 21st 2026, 17:30, with Stéphanie Debette, neurobiologist, Director of the Paris Brain Institute, recipient of the 2024 INSERM Grand Prize, member of the French Academy of Sciences:

“Brain Health: A Societal Challenge of the 21st Century”: A focus on Cerebral Vascular Health;
Toward a More Personalized and Holistic Approach.

Contact: Ingrid Peeters
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New event organized by Les Amis de l’IHES on Thursday April 16, 2026 at 5:30 pm (French Time) at IHES

Elaine Chew (pianist and researcher at King’s College London) gave a conference in English  (in simultaneous translation) and in hybrid format, entitled:

“Music of the Heart: Analogies and what they mean for heart health”

Our hearts sustain life. The muscles of the heart relax and contract 100,000 times a day, 3 billion times in a typical lifetime, to pump blood throughout the body. Heart disease is responsible for 1/3 of deaths worldwide. Music is an expression of life, relying upon fundamental physiological analogies to heartbeats and breathing to both mimic and evoke bodily experiences.

What can music tell us about heart disease? How can it be used precisely in medical interventions?

In this lecture, we shall explore the analogic connections between music and heartbeats (including abnormal ones) and the opportunities they present for music-based cardiovascular diagnostics and therapeutics, i.e. music heart theranostics.

This lecture was accompanied by performances of piano music made from cardiac arrhythmias and real-time visualisations of music’s impact on heartbeats and breathing.

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Next conference : Tuesday, June 2 2026, 5:30 pm, with Marie-Cécile BRUWIER, Egyptologist and Scientific Director of the Royal Museum of Mariemont (Belgium) :

” Héliopolis, the City of the Sun in Egypt ”

Contact: Ingrid Peeters

Event organised by Les Amis de l’IHES on Wednesday February 11, 2026  at IHES (Marilyn & James Simons Conference Center)

Program

5:30 pm: presentation of the installation by Vasilisa Nikiforova: « StoKaChic » 
The exhibition presents mathematical jewelry and allows visitors to explore the mathematical concepts behind it in a fun and interactive way.

6:00: pm:  conference by Fabrice Cotton (Postdam University) in French and in hybrid format, entitled:

  « Reducing the impact of earthquakes: scientific challenges and contributions from emerging technologies » 

The earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria in 2023 were among the most devastating in recent decades. Their intensity and consequences came as a surprise, even though their location and magnitude were consistent with seismological models. The extent of the damage was much greater than risk forecasts had predicted. This raises scientific challenges, including how to better anticipate future major earthquakes and reduce their consequences. Currently being explored: co-constructing seismic scenarios, using smartphones to detect and alert in real time, and applying artificial intelligence methods to anticipate earthquakes.

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Next conference on Thursday April 16th 2026 with Elaine Chew (pianist and reseracher at  King’s College London) : “Music and the heart: analogies and significance for heart health”

 

Contact: Ingrid Peeters

 

New event organised by Les Amis de l’IHES on Wednesday November 26th 2024, 6:30 pm (French time) at IHES.

Kumiko KOTERA, (CNRS-Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris) gave a conference in French, entitled:

“Messengers of the violent Universe”

As genuine paparazzi of the cosmos, astronomers today capture fleeting supernovae, pulsars, black hole coalescences, gamma-ray bursts and other phenomena. These sources have an extraordinary amount of energy, and release not only light, but also cosmic rays, neutrinos and even the gravitational waves, that we can detect since a few years now. In this lecture, we will explore this new field of research: the violent Universe, and the hunt for its multi-messengers. In doing so, I will tell the collective adventure of the GRAND project, that aims at detecting these particles using tens of thousands of antennas deployed in the Gobi Desert and the Argentine pampas.

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Contact: Ingrid Peeters

Photo credit: Franck Ferville ; NASA, ESA, STScI

New event organised by Les Amis de l’IHES on Thursday 13 June 2024, 6:00 pm (French time) at IHES.

Amandine AFTALION, (CNRS, Centre d’analyse et de mathématiques sociales, EHESS) gave a conference in French, entitled:

“Science at the service of athletes’ performance”

Why is it better to run behind someone?
How can you best adjust your speed to achieve the best time?
It all depends on the effort provided, the energy expended and one’s motivation.
Human beings are not robots and their movements are controlled by their brain.

Amandine Aftalion will address to these questions and a few others (like: Why does a golf ball have dimples? Why does one swim better slightly underwater? ) using notions of physics and mathematics presented in a simple and enjoyable way, allowing us to better understand some of the rules to improve the sporting performance of athletes and your own.

The conference will be followed by a friendly drink and a signing of Amandine AFTALION’ s book published in 2003 (CNRS editions):
« Be a champion, 40 facts you didn’t know about sports and science »

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Contact: Ingrid Peeters

Marleen Temmerman, obstetrician and WHO expert, gave a conference (in French) entitled:

“Why are Pregnancy and Childbirth still so deadly?”

According to a recent update from WHO, worldwide every two minutes a woman dies in childbirth, totalling 800 women every day or 287,000 women annually. Why, after almost 30 years since ICPD and Beijing Declaration and numerous other declarations, commitments, and reaffirmations, is global health failing on women and girls, and on gender equity? What is holding back governments and institutions from realising their commitments?

The need for transformational shift on gender equity in global health is urgent. For it to happen, we need to start by understanding the supremacies, hierarchies and powers that create and enable the structures in global health and unearth the dynamics these structures operate within.

Marleen Temmermann has presented the causes of maternal mortality in the world and the possible keys to address the problem.

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Contact : Ingrid Peeters

New event organized by Les Amis de l’IHES on Tuesday October 3rd, 2023, 6:00 pm (French time) at IHES

Claudia SILVA, an anthropologist, photographer and videographer, and Oscar GARCIA-PRADA, a geometer holding a research Chair at the Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (CSIC, Madrid) gave a joint conference (in French) as part of the photograph exhibition:

“Kolam: An Ephemeral Women´s Art of South India”

Strolling through the streets of South India, one can have the surprise to find beautiful geometrically-inspired designs on the ground, made from rice flour. This ephemeral art form, known as Kolam, is practiced every morning by women in the Tamil Nadu state at the entrance of their homes.

In her talk, Claudia SILVA presented some aspects and ideas on the beautiful South Indian tradition of Kolam. She discussed some of the anthropological aspects of Kolam and the relation to ephemeral art, education and women cultural practices.

Oscar GARCIA-PRADA then explored some of the connections of Kolam with geometry, graph theory, number theory, fractals and computer science.

The conference was followed by a friendly drink, during which participants discovered an exhibition showing photographs of Kolam by Claudia Silva.

The replay of the conference (in French) can be watched here.

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Contact : Ingrid Peeters

New event organized by Les Amis de l’IHES on Friday March 14, 2023 at 5:30 pm (French Time) at IHES

Jacques-Deric Rouault, researcher in evolutionary biology and former CNRS researcher gave a conference (in French) entitled:

“The Seven Daughters of Eve”

The analysis of successive mutations of mitochondrial DNA, transmitted by mothers, has shown that Europeans are descending from 7 women (The Seven Daughters of Eve of Brian Sykes), and that the world’s population is structured in about 40 lineages.

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Next event on Wednesday, May 31st 2023  at  6:00 pm with Etienne GHYS (ENS Lyon, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences) : “The Little History of Soccer Ball”.

Contact: Ingrid Peeters (01 60 92 66 64)

New event organized by Les Amis de l’IHES on Thursday June 23, 2022 at 5:00 pm (French Time) at IHES

Annie SAINSARD-CHANET gave a conference (in French) in hybrid format, entitled:

Molecular scissors: a biological revolution

“The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, has been awarded for the development of the CrispR-Cas9 or molecular scissors tool. With this tool, it is now possible to modify the genes of any type of cell, with an ease and precision previously unimaginable. The potential of CRISPR opens up unprecedented avenues for research in biology and in the medical field but poses ethical questions, particularly with regards to the manipulation of the genome of the human species.”
The conference was followed by a musical interlude with Christian Ivaldi and Sébastien Mongrand (four hand Piano).

Contact: Ingrid Peeters (01 60 92 66 64)

Initially planned for 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Ising model, the dedicated conference was finally held from May 30 to June 3, 2022, at IHES.

The Ising model is one of the most classical models of statistical physics and has been a testing ground for mathematicians and physicists for more than a century.

For the 100th (102!) anniversary of the Ising model, IHES wad pleased to host the special conference organized by Hugo Duminil-Copin (IHES), Slava Rychkov (IHES) and Béatrice de Tilière (Cérémade, Université Paris-Dauphine). These five days of talks, on subjects coming from various fields involved in the study of the model were an opportunity for scientists to exchange their views on a model that continues to fascinate and challenge them.

The conference was broadcast live online: 

List of speakers and round-table participants:

On 17 February 2022, Claude P. Bruter gave an hybrid conference (in French) taking place both at IHES and on zoom, entitled:

« Arts and mathematics: on the embodiment of mathematical objects within visual art »

Some works of several personalities of the contemporary artistic and mathematical world will illustrate the recent and prodigious development of techniques and tools of representations of the immense universe of mathematical objects. The primary physical origin of the stratified world of mathematics will be highlighted. In parallel to the evolution in its construction of the building M building housing the mathematical objects, colorful and mostly unusual forms of objects borrowed from number theories, geometric theories, topological and fractal theories will appear.

The conference, accompanied by an exhibition of works from ESMA (European Society for Mathematics and the Arts) was followed by a musical interlude by Noémie Combe (violin) and Thibault Damour (Piano).

Contact : Ingrid Peeters

Link to the works presented at the institute

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A virtual conference in honor of Luc Illusie was held from 7 to 11 June 2021. On this occasion, the following speakers gave talks:

Ahmed Abbes, Vladimir Berkovich, Bhargav Bhatt, Kęstutis Česnavičius, Miaofen Chen, Hélène Esnault, Ofer Gabber, Yongquan Hu, Nicholas Katz, Kazuya Kato, Gérard Laumon, Akhil Mathew, Sophie Morel, Ngô Bảo Châu, Arthur Ogus, Martin Olsson, Takeshi Saito, Yunqing Tang, Michael Temkin, Yichao Tian, et Cong Xue.

The programme [with a timetable centered on TU+2] is available at the following address as well as a registration form you will have to complete to receive the connexion link:

https://server.mcm.ac.cn/~zheng/LI/

Watch the videos of the conference: