Getting a drawing from all Nobel prizes I meet


Robert W. Wilson Nobel Prize in Physics (1978) for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation He's "Wilson" in "Penzias & Wilson" met in Houston, TX (2011)	Nicolaas Bloembergen Nobel Prize in Physics (1981) for his contribution to laser spectroscopy He's the guy behind non-linear optics met in Paris (2010)	Robert Curl Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1996) for the discovery of fullerenes (fullerenes are soccerball-shaped C⁶⁰) met in Houston, TX (2011)

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji Nobel Prize in Physics (1997) for his contribution to laser cooling He's the writer of a famous reference book on quantum mechanics met in Paris (2010)	Ahmed Zewail Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1999) for the development of femto-chemistry met in Paris (2010)	Herbert Kroemer Nobel Prize in Physics (2000) for his developments on heterostructures met in Paris (2010)

Theodor W. Hansch Nobel Prize in Physics (2005) for his contribution frequency combs and high precision spectroscopy met in Paris (2009)	George F. Smoot III Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) for [his] discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the CMB radiation met in Berkeley, CA (2013)	Charles K. Kao Nobel Prize in Physics (2009) for his contribution fiber optics met in Paris (2010)

Saul Perlmutter Nobel Prize in Physics (2011) for [his] discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae met in Berkeley, CA (2014)	Serge Haroche Nobel Prize in Physics (2012) for Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics met in Paris (2010)	Alain Aspect Wolf Prize in Physics (2010) for his tests of Bell inequalities met in Paris (2010)

Steven Chu Nobel Prize in Physics (1997) for the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with lasers Former Secretary of Energy met in Berkeley, CA (2014)	Arthur B. McDonald Nobel Prize in Physics (2015) for determining that neutrinos have a mass met in Berkeley, CA (2014)	Selfie with Saul Perlmutter, for the love of science:-)

K Barry Sharpless Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2001) for his work on stereoselective reactions met in Berkeley, CA (2016)	Robert H Grubbs Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2015) for his work on olefin metathesis met in Berkeley, CA (2016)	Eric Betzig Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2014) for his work on superresolution met in Berkeley, CA (2017)


Jocelyn Bell Burnell Breakthrough Prize (2019) for the discovery of pulsars (dropped from the Nobel prize in 1974) met in Berkeley, CA (2018)

I'v missed Charles Townes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1964), who refused to draw me a Maser. Long story with Maiman...
I've also missed Albert Fert (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2007), who is always too busy...

Other drawings

The following drawings are not from Nobel prize laureates, but from people I admire nevertheless.
Some taught me useful lessons, some I interacted with, and I have infinite respect for them all:)


Emmanuel Desurvire Pionneer in Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier Laureate of Millenium Technology Prize met in Palaiseau (2010)	Emmanuel Rosencher Mogul in optoelectronics French Academy of Science GP met in Palaiseau (2011)	Sébastien Bigo Optical Communications Transmission speed record breaker met in Paris (2010)	Juris Upatnieks Pioneer in holography met in Paris (2010)	Hervé Lefevre Fiber optics Inventor of Optical Gyroscope Former President of EOS met in Vincennes (2010)

François Hache Circular Dichroism in proteins CNRS Silver Medal (2011) met in Palaiseau (2008)	Emmanuel Joffre 2D spectroscopy Professor of QM at Ecole Polytechnique met in Palaiseau (2008)	Jean-Louis Martin Femtosecond biology Professor of Biology at Ecole Polytechnique met in Palaiseau (2008)	Etienne Klein Philosopher of science met in Palaiseau (2011)	Lance Knobel Uncharted World Link Editor-in-Chief (1992-2000) (World Economic Forum's magazine) met in Berkeley (2013)

Bruce Alberts Molecular Biology President (1993-2005) of the National Academy of Science Science Magazine's Editor in chief (2008-2013) met in Berkeley (2013)	Cleve Moler Matlab's mastermind LINPACK's author met in Berkeley (2013)	Joshua Bloom Gamma-Ray bursts Professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley met in Berkeley (2013)	Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Mathematical aspects of Physical theories Director (1994-2013) of Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques met in Berkeley (2013)	Cedric Villani Fields Medal (2010) for his proofs of nonlinear Landau damping and convergence to equilibrium for the Boltzmann equation. met in Berkeley (2013)

Paul Alivisatos Berkeley Lab director Quantum dot's pioneer met in Berkeley (2014)	Horst Simon Berkeley Lab deputy director Extreme computing (NERSC) met in Berkeley (2014)	Roger Falcone President of the American Physical Society (2017—) met in Berkeley (2014)	Jay Marx Director, Advanced LIGO Quantum dot's pioneer met in Berkeley (2018)	Wim Leemans Wakefield e- accelerators BELLA Petawatt laser met in Berkeley (2014)

Jennifer Doudna CRISPR-Cas9 mechanism Breakthrough Prize (2014) met in Berkeley (2015)

Building communities

I've co-founded the Berkeley Lab postdoc association (postdoc.lbl.gov), whose goal is to bring support to a over thousand postdocs at Berkeley Lab. It's a great vehicle to organize talks by eminent scientists and forums to share ideas and show off the latest developments of science, but also create bonds among young scienstists who will end up in so many labs accross the world.


Organizing events, talks (here's Alexis Madgrigal, from The Atlantic), seminar with Nobel prize laureates or advocating for postdocs with lab management

Over the past three years, I've also been working with the Berkeley Postdoc Entrepeneurial Program (bpep.berkeley.edu), where our group of volunteers organized events and support for trained scientists (a.k.a postdocs), who are the most likely to bring interesting technologies to market, for they know how it works and to not have a clear career path. I've written a piece in the print version of the Berkeley Science Review on the subject, and here's more details about my involvement.


Various events organized by BPEP (VC funding, Startup jobfair), and group picture!

Art+Science

I have worked towards the organization of an event dealing with the science in the art and art in science (momentarily paused).
I made a small inventory (pdf, in French) of what kind of stuff could be developed. You can have a look on my blog !
Some additional material can be found here, here or here for example.

I get hectic in front of chemical or physical phenomena such as gyroscopic effect or ferrofluids structure building.


Chemical gardens, made in champagne cups just after Serge Galam's Talk "Sociophysics : Do human behave like atoms". I found that champagne and silicate of soda don't mix very well...>

(check my weblog for news)

Science education, epistemology and maieutics

I made the transcript of the Feynman's "Fun to Imagine" (here, in English), and the translation into French (here or pdf).
I have also translated R. Hamming's talk "You and your research" (here in French), his essay "The Unreasonnable effectiveness of mathematics" (here in French); E. Dijkstra's EWD594 Archive "Parable" (here in French) and some other short texts.
You can find the most complete and up-to-date list of my translations here.

Deeper into epistemology, I OCRed 1959's "The two cultures" talke by C.R. Snow. You can find an html version here. I need to find some time to provide a good translation to French.
At the moment, I am translating the "Unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in Natural Science by Eugene Wigner (the full original text is here)
The most up-to-date list of my translations is here

Recently (2014), I have initiated with a colleague a bi-monthly event called "Weak Interactions", where young researchers from Berkeley Lab visit the lab of each others. The goal is discover scientist from other areas of study in their environment, in order to nurture collaboration and get hands-on experience of state-of-the-art technologies.
The idea came when I was volunteering as a tour guide for LBL, and realized that I didn't know much about what my revered colleagues were doing during a normal day:)


APEX Electron Gun	Polar Bear experiment	Super-conducting magnets

National Center for Electron Microscopy	Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment	National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

Argumentative learning

I am currently brainstorming on how argumentative theory could be used for machine learning, since current tools taken from neuroscience are not very efficient. You can watch out the results of my developments on my (other) website : argumentative-learning.com (still under construction).

Computing, Arduino, Kinect, etc...

I like to play with waves.
I like to play with electrons.
I like to play with electric sheeps (meh).

A project I had at Ecole Polytechnique.
The idea was to use outdoor advertising screens coupled with a webcam to make render perceptive 3D and make it interactive.
We were a team of 5; we were building a BP, and I was the programmer.

It worked pretty well, and we presented the product to JCDecaux' Director of Marketing. But our team desintegrated when things were to become serious : each one of us had to complete his education!

A light guitar made using Arduino Uno, a light sensor and a LED to simulate the string, a piezo to produce the sound and a joystick to change the tone.
It's a baby laser harp (unfortunately, I had only time to write my manuscript...)

Quotations collection

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
— Robert Heinlein

Check my quotations collection here (lots are in English, some are in French)

There's always more projects showcased on my weblog!