What does this congress mean to you? What is it that you like in mathematics? French mathematicians answered the questions for us. Find out more by clicking on their names!
I am very honored to be invited. It is a unique opportunity to meet people and evolve in a different environment. On a mathematical standpoint, I'm curious to hear the talks of researchers I've never met. I've always been fascinated by international events. This congress is somehow like the Olympic games. I'd love it if we all wore the same tracksuit, living in a big house named "France" on the waterfront and we would organise football matches with the other delegations.
It's like a Cannes Festival for mathematics: selection is very subjective, some movie directors that I admire are missing, yet it still is the most beautiful festival with a terrific history. I do wonder why I was invited rather than such or such, but I'm not sulking the opportunity nor the pleasure of it, and I'll be fit & neat to climb up the steps! Also of course, I'll listen to talks done by serveral mathematicians that I admire and who certainly will have so well-prepared their talks. A whole lot of good memories to come!
Naturally I'm pleased to be invited to this congress. It's a important step in my career as a researcher. Now, the short (45 minutes) talk I'm giving won't go into details as probably not many people will attend it - the domain of research is not at all represented in South America. But I'm taking special care of my article in the proceedings. Those constitute the most important issue of this congress to me: when they are well-thought and well-written, those articles stand as a landmark reference for many years afterwards.
I have an overview idea of what I'm going to talk about at Rio. But each time I try to go into details, I'm back at the very difficulty of the exercice: given a rather short time and without only adressing experts, how shall I convey ideas which implement a sophisticated machinery.
It's a huge celebration of mathematics! When I attended ICM in Seoul in 2014, I was strucked by the extraordinary feeling of togetherness which seemed to reign over the international mathematical community. People from all over the worlds came to the opening ceremony: I was sitting next to two Indian women and two mathematicians from Oman. Everywhere you could feel the pleasure of doing and understanding mathematics. On top of its role in disseminating the latest advances in active research domains, the ICM, it seems to me, takes up this challenge of creating links between people of very different origins, brought together by their common passion for our scientific discipline. Hopefully, the celebration of mathematics will be in full swing in Rio as it was in Seoul.
Being invited is of course an honour, an acknowledgement. I feel a little embarrassed too as I know mathematicians who are more important than me and were never invited... This great meeting of mathematics is no doubt necessary for the image that maths disseminates. It's also the opportunity to attend talks in all domains of maths by first-rate researchers. Finally, it's an opportunity for me to go to Rio for the first time and enjoy the multiple exotic fruit you can find there.
It is remarkable that plenary speakers manage to give an idea of their research domain to a public which is far from their research specialization. It's a specificity of the international congress.
This invitation to give a talk to ICM in the PDE section is an honour. The fact that ICM takes place at Rio de Janeiro this year is also satisfactory. The international congress, together with the satellite congress on "Nonlinear dispersive equations" organised in Florianopolis on the week before, and visits to IMPA will have given me a rare opporunity to meet, among others, a great deal of mathematicians working in Brazil and in Latin America. Exchanging between mathematicians working in the same domain is very important.
ICM gives the possibility to meet mathematicians from other research domains, to try & understand the problems they're raising. It's the only congress which allows this. I'm not sure the experience was fulfilled, as some speakers did not make themselves accessible to mathematicians from other domains, but others were fabulous, Etienne Ghys for instance. I stepped out from the opening ceremony, eager to do maths, it was so stimulating.
