OUR FRIEND PIERRE Nanie Perrin and Suzy Vascotto Will there be - PowerPoint PPT Presentation


 OUR FRIEND PIERRE 
 Nanie Perrin and Suzy Vascotto

Will there be many non-physicists talking about Pierre? We wanted to profit from this occasion to say, as colleagues of a different kind, how charming and funny he was to us, how easy to speak to. He is the first physicist with whom young Nanie hit it off, as soon as he arrived in the Division, in 1979. Of course, he was liked by all, as he was so pleasant and sympathetic. On the other hand, Suzy was already seasoned when she looked after his thesis, in 1980. She was then working in the CERN Typing Service, and some members of TH Division were their “clients”.

Pierre was twenty-five, already full of wit and charm, and he had tons of kindness. An instance of this is what he inserted in the acknowledgements for his thesis, where he wrote Apart from thanking us for the work we had put into producing the thesis, which was quite usual, this paragraph was so neat and special, wasn’t it! And typical of the fact that he never did things quite like everybody else.

We both saw a lot of people come and go at CERN, within TH Division or through “the Pool”, pleasant people, indifferent ones, and even some objectionable! Pierre, however, was one of those who stayed in our memory and heart, even though we had seen less of him for a long time, and certainly less still in recent years. The shock of his death was that much more brutal that we had heard nothing of what he had been through and had overcome in the last months. He was discrete, and even secretive. We knew nothing of his life, of his family, except that he had been born in Morocco and had lived part of his childhood in Fontenay-aux-Roses .

When he left CERN for the first time, at the end of 1980, it was to do his compulsory military duties. The Division had organized a little fête for him, for which Tania had drawn this lovely invitation. As for most people, even if they usually keep only the good moments in their mind, it was not an easy or pleasant time he had in the army.

About a fortnight after his incorporation, he wrote to the Secretariat and said: However, he made the most of it, and learnt some stupefying, awfully useful lessons, such as this one:

He had to do with some people like he had never come across before, some astonishing. Here is what a direct superior told him in a moment of confidence:

As he grew older, his qualities, sparkling intelligence, awareness, wittiness, kindness, spontaneous charm, availability, never tarnished and these were still defining him after he had become the first director of the Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory created in France in 2005. After that, we just had his visits, from time to time, always too short. We never let pass any of these occasions of seeing him, at least for a coffee together, and sometimes for a meal.

During one of his visits, in September 2007, Nanie and Pierre at the Reposoir in Chambésy In the years that followed, Nanie had other occasions to see him around the world, for instance when he attended a conference where she was working too, in Viet-nam, in August 2013.

As Suzy was turning 71 that month, they sent her this lovely picture showing, with Guido Martinelli, the number of her years.

These were also taken in Viet-nam (2013). with Nanie and with Emilian

The memory we have of Pierre is indelible, even if we know that his departure is definitive, this time. After the violent shock we felt a year ago, our sorrow is today as deep as was the pleasure of seeing him every time. This will never fade away.