Savant Mélange : Emmanuel Ullmo et Jean-Laurent Bonnafé - Conclusion

This is a privilege and somehow a chance to conclude this evening. I feel like I have closed a loop tonight. A very long time ago, over 40 years, I entered tenth grade at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, which is on the other side of Rue Saint-Jacques. I entered because in tenth grade I had already read books by Monsieur Fermi, which convinced me that I had to do science, so naturally it was the best address in Paris. So I went from the 15th arrondissement to Rue Saint-Jacques and entered Lycée Louis-le-Grand. I saw exceptional things, especially very great teachers. A few years later, I made life a little more complicated: instead of going back up Rue Saint-Jacques, turning on Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, and then taking Rue d'Ulm, I took the RER to Palaiseau. There I was thrown into the business world. But what I discovered was discipline, a lot of passion, a lot of rigor, a lot of intelligence, and also the chance to meet students who came from all over the world: Lebanese, Syrians, from École Polytechnique, Chinese who didn't even speak French but were completely on top of mathematics, perhaps even more so. Then I got a little lost in the business world, which is a universe that comes and goes. I changed sectors and missions several times, but in the end I settled in banking. Banking is a very particular profession because we put to work the wealth of others: we collect deposits, money from individuals, companies, institutions, pension funds, and we try to put it to work to finance meaningful projects. Meaningful projects are not simply those that will repay the loan; they can have a positive impact in terms of energy transition, inclusion, education, etc. So it's a very interesting job because it involves large numbers, often physical phenomena. The Black-Scholes equation is nothing but the Fourier equation from the early 19th century on heat, used in derivatives. The world of bonds, the whole ocean of capital markets, is nothing but the equations of combustion engines, fluid thermodynamics. This banking profession, when used badly, money contracts, can even crystallize, evaporate, and disappear. So it's a significant responsibility. And it means we increasingly need well-trained minds who ask the right questions honestly and transparently. Often we don't know, and we doubt many things: the ability to repay, the interest of this or that. I must say that scientific culture, beyond providing tools and instruments to navigate, guides and gives a form of discipline that is very interesting: is it demonstrated or not? Do we have intuition or not? There is always this reflex to doubt, to reassure oneself, and as was said, to confront oneself. In our jobs, we don't make decisions alone; we try to confront others, because otherwise this solitary sport can turn into catastrophe, as we saw not so long ago in very specific areas of banking and finance. So we need well-trained minds—not necessarily the most sophisticated—but those with this discipline. To have well-trained minds, we need very good teachers. And to have very good teachers in these subjects, we need very good researchers. Everyone I have frequented, everyone who trained me and trained many of my colleagues, were often people who devoted their entire lives to research and teaching. To have very good researchers and very good teachers, we need places that give light, that are like beacons that are clear and show a path. IHES is a bit like that: it shows a path, shows a form of excellence, a form of purity. The work done there, the research deployed, is simply beautiful. Obviously, you need to be brilliant to join these places; you need to measure yourself against others, to know how to draw all the interest. And so it illuminates a dimension that is very real, very physical. I would call it the Saclay plateau, where there are many other universities, schools, professors, teachings, but IHES is part of the ecosystem, a separate entity that is clear and gives meaning. When you visit IHES, you understand a little that credit cards simply wouldn't exist without prime numbers and the discipline given to them. They existed before they were discovered, but they had to be reinvented. As was said, none of that would exist. So supporting IHES for a company like ours—and there are many other companies that might have an interest—is to contribute to creating an ecosystem where there are people who give meaning, who give light, who give others the desire to surpass themselves. Not everyone is capable of fundamental research; probably if I had taken the direction of Rue Saint-Jacques, then Rue Pierre et Marie Curie, then Rue d'Ulm—after all, I was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure—maybe I would have been a mediocre researcher. I don't know; it doesn't matter. What matters is the desire to surpass oneself, to learn, and when there is doubt, to sincerely ask the question. That is a question, a situation that must be resolved—certainly in banking, but in many other industrial societies as well. When you don't know in the end, you must not act, because when you act on a large scale, you essentially impose risks on others. This reality can be said of energy, pollution, climate change, or financial crises: when you can't control what you do on a large scale, it is essentially others who suffer. So this discipline is absolutely important. There are many high school students in the room. I think we will need many, many scientists tomorrow to do artificial intelligence, but be careful: it will be intelligence that is only artificial, so we must know how to guide it. We will need scientists who know how to communicate, because if there is too much artificial intelligence manipulated by a few, we will have issues of democracy that will require those who do good science to explain it well to others, so that good science is accessible to them in one way or another—not necessarily through the intimacy of the demonstration, but through a sense that yes, it is positive and has an interest. So doing good science is very important. Work, the discipline of the true, the false, doubt, training, confrontation—these are important. And if I may suggest, in France we often have very scientific or very literary careers. In banking, what is very important is to learn history in addition to science, because there are cycles. History books write cycles well; they explain cycles. There are times to progress, times to regress. Right now, we vaguely feel that the planet is regressing: we have lost diplomats, we have lost quite a few things; we are regressing a bit. There are cycles in banking; sometimes we feel everything is fine, the horizon is clear, the sun is full, the speed is good, and then suddenly a meteorological phenomenon occurs, a complicated equation, and it diverges. When doing these jobs, we must remember that there are cycles, that accidents don't only happen to others. This can be said of nuclear energy, of many fields. So this is a simple testimony. I spent many years in the building across the street with excellent teachers, people who were not just voices; they were passionate, engaged 200%. Many of us come from these backgrounds. All those who come out must give back to this ecosystem what it deserves to organize the future. It's not simply the idea of giving back because it's good, but simply to sustain certain histories, a certain school of knowledge, and a future that will be better if science is well used and accessible to all, understood. I recall that if one day we have robots to manage the breakdowns of one another, we must be sure the robot is truly more than just artificially intelligent. I say this simply because otherwise we could have a little problem at the end of the day. So that's my testimony. I thank IHES, its director, the wonderful team that works there, Marwan, who made me encounter this magnificent place, and I wish you a happy anniversary and a long road. Thank you.