Jean-Pierre Luminet
Jean-Pierre Luminet is a French astrophysicist, writer and poet, world-known specialist of black holes and cosmology. He works as research director for the CNRS, and is a member of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, of the Laboratoire Univers et Théories of the Paris-Meudon Observatory and a visiting scientist at the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseilles.
He has published many articles in the most prestigious journals and reviews in these areas. He has been awarded several prizes for his work in pure science and in science communication. He also serves on the editorial board of Inference : The International Review of Science.
The asteroid 5523 Luminet, discovered in 1991 at Mt Palomar Observatory, was after him.
Indeed, one of Luminet's greatest efforts has been to make his research work understandable to the non-scientific community. Luminet is also a prominent figure in art and literature. He has produced fifteen popular science books, seven historical novels, TV documentaries, multimedia productions, and six collections of poetry. He is also an artist, an engraver, a sculptor and a musician. He has collaborated with celebrated composers such as Gérard Grisey and Hèctor Parra.
Luminet's literary work has been translated into a dozen languages.
Scientific activities
- After studies in Mathematics at Saint-Charles University of Marseilles, in 1976 he moved to Paris-Meudon Observatory to undertake a PhD with Brandon Carter as his advisor. After a few months spent at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge, England, where he met Stephen Hawking, in 1977 he defended his PhD thesis at Paris University on the subject of Singularities in Cosmology. In 1979 he got a permanent research position at the CNRS and developed his scientific activities at Paris Observatory until 2014, before joining the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. In the interval he was a visiting scientist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, at the University of Berkeley, California and a visiting astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, Chile
- and published in April 20191979 – He created the first "image" of a black hole with an accretion disk using nothing but an early computer, lots of math and India ink, predicting that it could apply to the supermassive massive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy M87. In April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope Consortium provided a spectacular confirmation of Luminet's predictions by providing the first telescopic image of the shadow of the M87* black hole and of its accretion disk.
- 1982 – With physicist Brandon Carter, he invented the concept of tidal disruption event, namely the destruction of a star passing in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. They showed that this phenomenon could result in the violent destruction of the star in the form of a "stellar pancake", causing a reactivation of nuclear reactions in the core of the star in the stage of its maximum compression. With other collaborators Luminet later developed the model of tidal destruction, predicting specific observational signatures and introducing the concept of “tidal supernovae”. Finally the theory of TDE was confirmed by the observation of spectacular eruptions resulting from the accretion of stellar debris by a massive object located in the heart of Active Galactic Nuclei such as NGC 5128 or NGC 4438, and even explains the superluminous supernova SN 2015L, better known by the code name ASASSN-15lh, interpreted as the tidal explosion of a white dwarf just before being absorbed beneath the horizon of a massive black hole.
- 1995 – With his colleague Marc Lachièze-Rey, he coined the term "Cosmic Topology" for describing the shape of space, proposing a variety of multiply-connected universe models compatible with the standard Friedmann-Lemaître models of relativistic cosmology.
- 2003 – Large scale anomalies in the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background observed by the WMAP satellite led to the suggestion, by Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Observatoire de Paris and colleagues, that the shape of the universe is a finite dodecahedron, attached to itself by each pair of opposite faces to form a Poincaré homology sphere. During the following years, astronomers searched for more evidence to support this hypothesis but found none.
- Jean-Pierre Luminet is also a specialist in the history of cosmology and in particular the emergence of the concept of the Big Bang, emphasizing in several books and articles the leading role played by the Belgian priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître. In 2018 the International Astronomical Union recommended that the so-called Hubble's law – which relates to the Universe's expansion and underpins modern cosmology – now be known as the Hubble-Lemaître law.
- Now working in Quantum Gravity Theories, Luminet published a critical analysis of the Holographic principle and the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Artistic activities
- In the field of visual arts, Luminet devoted to drawing, engraving and sculpture. He exhibited his works in several French and international exhibitions, such as
- * 1982 Deux dessinateurs de l'Imaginaire : Gérard Méresse et Jean-Pierre Luminet, Bibliothèque Trocadéro, Paris
- * 1994 L'Encre et le Fer, Centre Culturel de Meudon, France
- * 1996 Entre art et science, la création, Fondation Dosne-Thiers, Paris
- * 2000 Visions de l'espace, Université de Mons-Hainaut, Mons, Belgique
- * 2005 L'œuvre au Noir, Collegio Cairoli, Pavia
- * 2010 Strange Universes, Universitatea Nationale de Arte de Bucarest
- In the field of literature J.-P. Luminet has published several poetry books and seven novels devoted to the major figures of the history of astronomy.
- In the field of music, Luminet collaborated in 1991 with Gérard Grisey to produce a piece of cosmic music called . This work for six percussionists, magnetic tape and astronomical signals coming from pulsars has become a classic of contemporary music and is regularly performed around the world.
- Eventually Luminet likes to establish convergent links between poetry, art, artists and sciences. He has published several artbooks in collaboration with celebrated artists such as Vladimir Skoda, Brigitte Tartière, Marc Pessin or Ernest Pignon-Ernest.
- In 1998 Luminet was a curator of the exhibition Figures du Ciel , coupled to the opening of the new Bibliothèque nationale de France
Television documentaries
- Infiniment courbe, 52 mn, Prod. Arte/CNRS Audiovisuel, 1994. Five international awards
- Vagabondes du Ciel, 52 mn, Prod. Agat Films/Arte 1999, Three international awards
- Du Big Bang au vivant, 90 minutes, ECP Productions, 2010
- Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, Season 2 Ep.2 "Is there an Edge to the Universe?", 2011
Honours and recognition
- In 1997 he won the Flammarion Prize of the Société Astronomique de France
- In 1998 he was elected Correspondig Member of the French Académie de l'Air et de l'Espace
- In 1999 he won the International Georges Lemaître Prize
- In 1999 the asteroid 5523 Luminet was after him
- In 2000 he was made Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and promoted to Officer in 2006
- In 2006 he won the Paul Doisteau-Emile Butet Prize of the French Academy of Sciences
- In 2007 he won the Science Communication Prize given by the European Commission
Selected publications
Popular science books (in French)
- 1987 : Les Trous Noirs
- 1994 : La Physique et l'infini with Marc Lachièze-Rey
- 1998 : Figures du Ciel with Marc Lachièze-Rey
- 1999 : Eclipses, les rendez-vous célestes with Serge Brunier
- 2002 : Le Feu du ciel : météores et astéroïdes tueurs
- 2004 : L'invention du Big Bang
- 2005 : L'Univers chiffonné
- 2005 : De l'infini with Marc Lachièze-Rey
- 2006 : Le destin de l'univers : Trous noirs et énergie sombre
- 2009 : Bonnes nouvelles des étoiles with Élisa Brune
- 2011 : Illuminations
- 2012 : Astéroïdes : la Terre en danger
- 2015 : L’univers en 100 questions
- 2016 : Dialogues sous le ciel étoilé with H. Reeves
- 2016 : De l’infini – horizons cosmiques, multivers et vide quantique '' with M. Lachièze-Rey, Paris, Dunod
Popular science books (in English)
- 1992 : Black Holes" , Cambridge University Press
- 2001 : Glorious Eclipses, Cambridge University Press
- 2001 : Celestial Treasury, Cambridge University Press
- 2008 : The Wraparound Universe, New York, AK Peters
Novels and poetry (in French)
- 1993 : Noir soleil
- 1996 : Les poètes et l'Univers, Éditions le cherche-midi
- 1999 : Le Rendez-vous de Vénus
- 2004 : Itinéraire céleste
- 2002 : Le Bâton d'Euclide
- 2006 : Les bâtisseurs du ciel, Tome 1, Le secret de Copernic
- 2008 : Les bâtisseurs du ciel, Tome 2, La discorde céleste: Kepler et le trésor de Tycho Brahé
- 2009 : Les bâtisseurs du ciel, Tome 3, L'œil de Galilée
- 2010 : Les bâtisseurs du ciel, Tome 4, La Perruque de Newton
- 2012 : La Nature des choses, Éditions le cherche-midi
- 2014 : Un trou énorme dans le ciel, Éditions Bruno Doucey
- 2015 : Ulugh Beg, L'astronome de Samarcande, Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès
Selected references
- J.-P. Luminet, I , Astronomy and Astrophysics, 75, 228-235
- B. Carter & J.-P. Luminet, ', Nature, 296, 212-214
- J.-P. Luminet & B. Carter, , Astrophys.J.Suppl. 61, 219-248
- M. Lachièze-Rey & J.-P. Luminet, ', Physics Reports, 254, 135-214
- J.-P. Luminet et al.,, 2003.
- J.-P. Luminet : , Inference : International Review of Science vol.1 n°2
- J.-P. Luminet : ', Scholarpedia, 10:31544
- J.-P. Luminet : ', Inference 1,
- J.-P. Luminet : ,