CNRS

• Jacqueline Bloch, magician of light
  The outstanding physicist Jacqueline Bloch is a specialist in polaritons, microscopic objects halfway between matter and light. She has just been awarded the CNRS Gold Medal, France’s highest scientific distinction. A portrait.
• Solving the Schrödinger equation with imagination
  A governing equation in quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation is, in practice, impossible to solve exactly. The mathematicians Éric Cancès, Mathieu Lewin, and Julien Toulouse have now proposed a radical reformulation of it, in order to study complex systems that resist exploration by theorists.
• Live from Mesopotamia, 4,000 years ago
  The oldest private correspondence in human history is about marriages and divorces, trade and tax evasion, livestock breeding or weaving… Women’s voices stamped in clay four millennia ago offer eerily topical accounts of the affairs of the day.
• The many tricks of roaming cells
  The ability of a cell to move underpins several biological processes, including healing and cancer. Several CNRS teams are trying to unravel the molecular mechanisms in play.
• Jewish presence predates Islam in Arabia
  The discovery of a previously unknown village in a region of Saudi Arabia that was thought to be only sparsely populated during Late Antiquity reveals the presence of sedentary Jewish communities just before the advent of Islam. The archaeologist Jérôme Rohmer tells CNRS News about this finding.