Institutional Key Events
May 17, 2018: Groundbreaking for the 2R-CIRM project
Trustees and partners of the major Cirm extension project (detailed in the Works section of this document) gave the start of the works on May 17, 2018. Present were Marc SAVASTA, deputy regional delegate for research and technology, representing Pierre DARTOUT, Prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône; Isabelle SAVON, PACA regional councilor, representing Renaud MUSELIER, President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region; Pascal AUSCHER, director of the CNRS National Institute of Mathematical Sciences and their Interactions (INSMI), representing Antoine PETIT, President and CEO of CNRS; Stéphane SEURET, president of the Société Mathématique de France, Ghislaine GIBELLO, regional delegate for Provence and Corsica of the CNRS; Marc SENTIS, chargé de mission to the Vice-president of Aix-Marseille University, representing Yvon BERLAND, President of Aix-Marseille University, Patrick FOULON, Director of Cirm and Marie-Laure ROCCA-SERRA, representing Jean-Claude GAUDIN, Mayor of Marseille and President of the Metropolis of Aix-Marseille Provence and Lionel ROYER-PERREAUT, Mayor of the 9th and 10th districts of Marseille.
October 16, 2019: Inauguration of the CIRM extension: 2R-CIRM and the extension/modernization of the restaurant
October 13 & 14, 2021: 40 years of Cirm
Cirm blew out its 40 candles with its community on October 13 and 14. This anniversary was an opportunity for Cirm to address and thank all its audiences:
its supervisory bodies – Aix-Marseille University, CNRS and the Société Mathématique de France,
its partners – the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the LabEx Carmin, the Archimede Institute, the Southern Region, the City of Marseille, the French and foreign laboratories that support the travel and stays of their researchers,
the members of its board of directors and scientific council, who guarantee the richness and scientific diversity of the events it hosts, and the good management of the premises,
the scientific community for whom Cirm has been, for 40 years, a refuge, a home, a wonderful place to work in immersion, a place to share and to progress,
all the students and high school pupils to whom Cirm wants to open its scientific wealth,
more widely society, the general public, by participating in the understanding and visibility of mathematics…
The official ceremony took place on Wednesday, October 13, in the presence of the president of Aix-Marseille University, Eric Berton, the director of the Institut des sciences mathématiques et de leurs interactions-Insmi-CNRS, Christophe Besse, the president of the Société Mathématique de France, Fabien Durand, Aurélie Biancarelli-Lopez, deputy mayor of Marseille in charge of higher education and research, Pierre Oudart, director of the Beaux-arts de Marseille, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, mathematician and former president of the European Research Council, Charles Torossian, director of the Institut des hautes études de l’éducation et de la formation (IH2EF) and special advisor to the Direction générale de l’enseignement scolaire (DGESCO), and Etienne Ghys, director of research emeritus at the CNRS, and perpetual secretary of the Académie des sciences.
Artur Avila, Fields Medalist in 2014, joined the guests on Wednesday and Cédric Villani, Fields Medalist in 2010, wished to address the high school students on Thursday.
Pascal Hubert, director of Cirm, proposed a moving moment, a round-table discussion in the presence of former directors of the Cirm, moderated by Jean-Pierre Bourguignon. Jean-Paul BRASSELET, Jean-Pierre LABESSE, Robert COQUEREAUX, Pascal CHOSSAT and Patrick FOULON spoke about the highlights of their time at Cirm, the context of the time, interactions with other sciences, internationalization and the attractiveness of Cirm.
A ceremony for all
The morning of Thursday, October 14 was devoted to mathematical presentations (to be found online on the CIRM’s YouTube channel, which has nearly 30,000 views per month) by : Anne-Laure Dalibard – professor at Sorbonne University, member of the Jacques-Louis Lions Laboratory (LJLL – CNRS, Sorbonne University & University of Paris), François Charles, professor, member of the Laboratoire de Mathématiques d’Orsay (LMO – CNRS & Université Paris-Saclay) and at the Département de Mathématiques et Applications (DMA) of the École Normale Supérieure de Paris and Javier Fernández de Bobadilla, Research professor at the Basque Center For Applied Mathematics (BCAM), Holder of the Jean-Morlet Chair at CIRM (2021 – Semester 2).
The whole day of Thursday was dedicated to a hundred students from high schools of the Academy of Aix-Marseille. The program included mathematical stands run by Maths pour Tous and the IREM, exhibitions, an escape game offered by the Cirm library, the screening of a web series « Voyages au pays des maths » (Journeys to the land of maths) with commentary by Olga Paris-Romaskevich – a CNRS researcher (I2M Marseille) – and by the director Denis van Waerebeke, etc. The film-documentary Man Ray et les équations shakespeariennes, directed by Quentin Lazzarotto and produced by the Institut Henri-Poincaré was also shown to the guests.
Highlight of the high school day: the exceptional presence of Etienne Ghys, emeritus director of research at the CNRS, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, who proposed an original presentation « Games of light ». Enormous success. Etienne Ghys made the amphitheater overflow! And the three other rooms in the Cirm in which his lecture was broadcast.
Cédric Villani, Fields Medalist 2010, deputy of Essonne, sent a special video message to Cirm and to the young people.
Two competitions on the occasion of this anniversary
A visual from a contest launched on the occasion of the 40th anniversary: the winners, Alba Málaga and Samuel Lelièvre, imagined a pseudosphere paved by fundamental domains for SL₂(Z) action. This evokes the modular curve, a hyperbolic orbifold that appears naturally in various areas of mathematics;
an artistic score, the result of a beautiful collaboration with the Beaux-arts de Marseille: a call for tenders issued to the school’s graduates in June 2021 led to some beautiful projects… The idea was to imagine a work of art on the ground, around the restaurant’s terrace, with Mont Puget park as a backdrop and Penrose’s pavements as inspiration. The winning project was presented by Pascal Hubert and Pierre Oudart. It demonstrates an exceptional and exemplary rapprochement between the arts and sciences. A first collaboration of this nature on campus that will hopefully give ideas to the Cirm’s neighbors! (Details of the project in the « Maths & Arts » section of this document).
The summary of the two days in video (10 mn)
All the video contents of the ceremony (presentations, speeches, etc.)