Thibault Damour’s week in New York

Invited by the bookstore Albertine in New York to give a talk about Proust and Einstein, Thibault Damour took advantage of the opportunity to present two conferences about the recent detection of gravitational waves organized by Friends of IHES. Specialist of general relativity, he introduced in 2000 (with several collaborators) a new method for describing the motion and gravitational radiation of coalescing binary black holes, which gave the first prediction of the gravitational wave signal observed by LIGO in September 2015. Whether they be students from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on June 21 or part of the American network of IHES on June 22, participants could appreciate Thibault Damour’ speaker qualities, who managed to share this extraordinary discovery with enthusiasm.

On June 23, he addressed a more literary subject as he talked about the question of time in the work of Proust and Einstein. This new talk delighted scientists and fans of Proust, gathered in the prestigious booksstore of the 5th Avenue.

Watch the filmed conference “Proust and Einstein: In Search of Time” here.