Archive for Morbihan
Cédric, le retour ?
Posted in Books, pictures, University life with tags apéro, book review, Brittany, café, Cédric Villani, Ecology, French politics, French wines, interview, Le Monde, Libé, Louis Lyons, Morbihan, Paris, Rennes on January 12, 2026 by xi'an
Within a non-Euclidean distance of a few issues, Le Monde and Libération both ran an interview of Cédric Villani, not truly a coïncidence since he recently published Leçons de mathématique joyeuse, a general public book on mathematics (I did not read), derived from a series of conferences he gave in Paris ten years ago. With a chapter on the best and the worst errors of (Henri) Poincaré, where he states that statistics is a late-comer in the mathematics pantheon because “it is complicated, it is even completely counter-intuitive.” However, there is very little on mathematics and research in these interviews, as the interviewers are clearly more interested in the politics of Villani, a former deputé and unsuccessful candidate for the City of Paris mayorship. Although he is now teaching in both Lyon and Rennes, since he currently lives in a nearby village that happens to be very close to my family house in Morbihan.
