Alexandre Grothendieck, who is considered one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry, left a considerable mark on mathematics through his genius and his reflections on his time. Ten years after his death, the mathematician Leila Schneps revisits his legacy.
Before going to school to learn how to read and write their language, children first manage to understand and then speak it. How are they able to do so, almost all of them spontaneously, without a...
The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside humans, birds have an extraordinary sense of balance. How do these direct descendants of the dinosaurs maintain this stability, especially...
The fossils of this primate, which were discovered in the early 2000s and date back 7 million years, remain the subject of intense debate, notably as to whether they should be considered part of the...
By depriving them more or less temporarily of their sense of smell, the Covid-19 pandemic made thousands of people abruptly realise the importance of their olfactory system. Research is now trying to...
Forests cover a third of the world's land surface. Although they provide us with invaluable services, they are now under so much pressure that we are faced with our own contradictions between...
For the past 20 years, this specialist in developmental and evolutionary biology has been passionately dedicated to studying a small fish that lives in the waters of Central America. So much so that...
In March 2020, France was one of the countries that adopted the strictest lockdown measures in an attempt to curb the Covid-19 pandemic. The historian and sociologist Nicolas Mariot looks back at...
The recent discovery of a binary system containing an extremely rare object, the most massive black hole (apart from SgrA*) ever detected in our Galaxy, calls into question the models for the...
On our planet, everything is interconnected, from terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biodiversity to ice sheets, rivers and oceans. But a recent report reveals that the dynamics of these different...
Research on tinnitus, a recent investigative field, is now enabling a clearer understanding of the causes and effects of this symptom that affects nearly eight million people in France.
Could the power of the dollar be in decline? As BRICS countries openly toy with the idea of creating a common currency, is the global system ready to adopt a new international money? Physicists, who...
Winner of the 2023 Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in the “Young Woman Scientist” category, this research chemist has developed the very first experimental structure of a human olfactory receptor.