“It’s a reward that’s a little difficult to bear, I almost don’t sleep at night,” confides Michel Talagrand.

Very moved, the French researcher who spent his entire career at the CNRS, confides that he “got much more than what (he) deserves”.

“It’s a reward that’s a bit difficult to carry, I almost don’t sleep at night, I sweat.”, testifies to France Inter Michel Talagrand, awarded this Wednesday with the prestigious Abel Prize in mathematics. He explains having “got much more than what (he) deserves”.

The 72-year-old former research director at the CNRS, fifth Frenchman to win the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the discipline, looks back on the announcement of his consecration by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, very moved: “My brain shut down, the information was so extraordinary and unexpected.” “I called my wife since she has supported my work for many years by never disturbing me and she deserved to be the first to learn the new“, he confides.

A career dedicated to functional analysis and probability

Joining the CNRS at the age of 22 after studying at the University of Lyon, Michel Talagrand devoted his career to functional analysis and probability. “Random processes are all around us and probabilities are the powerful model to study them”he explains on France Inter. “The safety of nuclear power plants, the maintenance of dams for example, are based on probabilities and my work on the theoretical part, that is to say the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms which make it possible to build these models”. If he recognizes that this work has not “immediately a practical application”he adds that they “contribute to the clarification and strengthening of the tools which enable them to have practical applications”.

“The public doesn’t realize that mathematics is all around us, but sometimes it takes a while to apply it. You shouldn’t want to have applications immediately.”

Michel Talagrand, researcher

at France Inter

Michel Talagrand chose maths “simply because this (his) father was a professor of mathematics”, especially since he was “very poor in all other disciplines”, he tells France Inter. Also a choice “by necessity”. “I lost an eye when I was five, it wasn’t too bad, but I had multiple retinal detachments when I was 15 and lived for years in the terror of going blind”, he slips. For “fight this terror”he “throw” In work. “Once you get a little involved, it becomes easier and easier and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else,” he adds.

From “fairly mediocre” student to the Abel Prize

From“fairly mediocre”it then becomes “a good student” at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and was then recruited at the CNRS in 1974, before becoming a doctor in mathematical sciences at the University of Paris VI. In 1978, he won a bronze medal from the CNRS then turned to probability. His research work notably addresses stochastic processes, the concentration of measurements or even spin glasses, contributions “impossible” to explain to the general public.

“I have only been a loner but working alone does not mean being isolated”he assures. “It is very useful to have contact with others (…) sometimes it only takes a sentence exchanged with a colleague to trigger a discovery”, laughs Michel Talagrand. However, with age, he admits to having lost his creativity: “Ideas slow down, the last time I truly felt the wonder of having a new idea, I was 52”confides the one who is now 72. “It’s time to stop”says the retiree, for whom “Mathematics is a youth sport.”