Author: French Physical Society

Emilie du Châtelet and  Jean Ricard SFP Prizes

The prestigious Emilie du Châtelet and Jean Ricard SFP Prizes have been awarded in 2020 to Paul Loubeyre (CEA) and to Luc Blanchet (CNRS), respectively. Paul Loubeyre works at the forefront in the field of high pressure science and made impressive breakthroughs to observe metallic hydrogen thanks to a new toroidal diamond-based cell and the infrared synchrotron source at Soleil. Luc Blanchet is a theoretician specialised in general relativity: his results regarding black holes properties were key to their observations by the LIGO-VIRGO observatories. More details on www.sfpnet.fr

SFP 2021 Grand Prizes

Nominations for the SFP 2021 Grand Prizes are open until 31 May 2021. Four of these prizes are bi-national, with the German, English, Italian and Swiss Physical Societies. Nomination is also open for the Paul Langevin prize, devoted to theoreticians. Although the nominee must have worked mainly in a French laboratory for the last decade, nominations are very welcome from abroad. All details on www.sfpnet.fr

"Night of Time" in 2021

Every two years, SFP organises, in collaboration with CNRS and CEA, a special large-scale event aimed at the general public and high school pupils, "The night of...". After the "Night of gravitational waves in 2017 and the "Night of Antimatter" in 2019, the "Night of Time" (https://www.sfpnet.fr/la-nuit-des-temps-2021) took place on 10 March 2021. Its format had unfortunately to be adapted to COVID times and was purely on-line. The programme consisted of a series of conferences, a round-table on time irreversibilty, short movies regarding the measurement of cosmic microwave background and the results of the various challenges proposed to high school pupils, and scored more than 15'000 connections. A face-to-face and joyful edition is scheduled on the same theme in 2022 with 26 participating sites.

Guy Wormser President of the French Physical Society

Guy Wormser has been elected new SFP president in February 2021 for a two-year mandate. He is a particle physicist working at IJCLab (University Paris-Saclay and CNRS).