Luminet Jean-Pierre
Professor
Jean-Pierre Luminet
Jean-Pierre Luminet is an Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS, working at the Astrophysics Laboratory of Marseille, after having long been a member of the Universe and Theories Laboratory at the Paris-Meudon Observatory. In 1978, he was the first to perform a numerical simulation of the appearance of a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk — producing a virtual image that was confirmed forty years later by the first telescopic photograph of a supermassive black hole, obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Beginning in 1995, he investigated the topology of the Universe, and in 2003 proposed that certain anomalies in the cosmic microwave background could be interpreted as evidence of a positively curved space with the topology of Poincaré’s dodecahedral space.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1999 Georges Lemaître Prize, the 2007 European Prize for Scientific Communication, and UNESCO’s 2021 Kalinga Prize and Einstein Medal. The asteroid (5523) Luminet, discovered at the Palomar Observatory in 1991, was named in his honor in recognition of his contributions.
He is also an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. In a prolific body of work seeking to unite science, history, music, and art, he has published more than thirty books — including essays, novels, and collections of poetry — translated into a dozen languages.
