Mathematics lovers were waiting for it, they were served! The Maison Poincaré, the first museum in France entirely devoted to mathematics and their applications will be inaugurated on September 27 and will open its doors to the public on September 30 in the Latin Quarter in Paris, the CNRS announced on Tuesday. Cédric Villani, the mathematician and former deputy, has worked for ten years to see the light of day for this 900 m2 museum. It will be located in the Jean-Perrin building of the Institut Henri-Poincaré (IHP), an international research center attached to CNRS and Sorbonne University.
The museum opens “in a context where societal issues on math are more present than ever”, told AFP the director of the IHP, Sylvie Benzoni, who made Cédric Villani’s project a reality. “Our idea is to get schoolchildren and the public to dialogue with the researchers who attend our institute”, added the mathematician, professor at the University Claude-Bernard Lyon 1. The Maison Poincaré wants to present a subject “alive, in touch with society”, with the help of mediation workshops with schoolchildren.
A museum suitable for all levels
The museum is aimed at all audiences from the 4th, which roughly corresponds to the “minimum theoretical level of the general population”, according to Sylvie Benzoni. The permanent exhibition spaces are characterized by verbs (connect, become, invent, model, share, visualize) to “show math in action”. Through videos, games, manipulations and audio devices, the public will be able to live an “unexpected experience” of maths to “see, hear and touch them”, explains the IHP.
By reintroducing maths in the common core in high school, “the ministry has taken note that this is a societal issue” given that “too few students are moving towards scientific careers”. “We want to contribute to increasing the general level of mathematical culture in France, which is quite modest or even low,” she said.