André Neveu: first of the rope

André Neveu was awarded a major distinction in the field of theoretical physics and mathematics by the International Centre for Theoritical Physics (ICTP) on August 10. The 2020 Dirac Medal rewards the Emeritus Research Director of the Charles Coulomb Laboratory - along with two other eminent physicists - "for their pioneering contributions to the creation and formulation of string theory".

Theoretical physics? " A discipline that evolves at the frontier between mathematics and physics ," describes André Neveu. Its aim: to develop mathematical models to describe and understand experimental results. "This is exactly what Newton did when he invented universal gravitation to understand the movements of the Moon and planets observed by Kepler "says the specialist.

These models, whose " elegance, beauty and simplicity " André Neveu praises, have been the essence of his work for over 50 years. First during his studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, then at Princeton University from 1969 to 1971 and at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study - of which Einstein himself was a member - where he remained until 1977. On his return to France, he worked for 6 years at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, then for the same period at CERN in Geneva, before joining the University of Montpellier in 1989.

Various string excitations

If awarded in 2020, the Dirac Medal will reward the work carried out by André Neveu since the start of his career: the formulation of string theory. " This model was invented to describe certain characteristics of elementary particles. It describes particles not as points, but as various excitations of a string, rather like a piano string with many harmonics ", explains the physicist.

It's a field of research that continues to fascinate him: "There are still many things we don't understand, even beyond our comprehension, and we still need to understand these objects and their properties better ". And to advance this high-level research, André Neveu relies on exchange: "Weneed cross-fertilization! Opening up, exchanging ideas with foreign colleagues who see things from a different angle. It's essential if new ideas are to emerge. You haveto broaden your horizons to get other points of view.

A philosophy that André Neveu himself has put into practice, and which has borne fruit: before the Dirac Medal, the researcher had already been awarded numerous prizes for his contributions to theoretical physics, including the Paul Langevin Prize of the French Physical Society in 1973 and the Gentner-Kastler Prize in 1988.