An Evening at the Collège

The French academic world is fairly hierarchical and nothing is grander than a chair at the Collège de France. This is the pinnacle which only very few scientists reach. There must be a handful of physicists, same for mathematicians and chemists, at any given time. Professors are required to teach one lecture course each year on a subject of their choice. Françoise Combes was appointed a few years ago. She gives a series lof lectures on dark energy this winter. Each lecture is followed by a seminar which is meant to be more specialised. The funny thing is that although lectures are given before some 300 people, none of them are specialists and most of them are retirees with a keen interest in science.

I had never been to the college before this, or briefly years ago when a workshop on "brane models" was organised in a fairly small room for a very limited number of cosmologists. So about a week ago I received two emails from Françoise Combes and Pierre Binetruy. Pierre was meant to give the following seminar but could not make it. Asked to be a substitute, I accepted hoping to be a bit of a Patrick Revelli or David Fairclough, depending on which side of the channel you are leaning (and definitely showing my age here ). So I gave my talk last Monday on "Dark Energy, a Problem for Physicists" which was not a title chosen by me. Not sure how I fared as there was no chanting from the Kop. But here goes, this could have been my finest hour.