MATH WIZZ: Bernard Arnault’s family holding company Agache is investing 50 million euros to fund the creation of a new institute for mathematics and fundamental sciences at École Polytechnique, France’s top engineering school, from which LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s chairman and chief executive officer graduated in 1969.
Set to open at the university’s Palaiseau campus south of Paris by 2030, the new building will serve as a French center of excellence and a hub for international research collaboration, and is seen as key to ensuring France and the school’s ongoing competitiveness on the international academic and technological stage.
The new center, to be named the Bernard Arnault Institute for Mathematics and Fundamental Sciences, will host around 400 faculty researchers, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows and will be a hub where mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists and students will work together on scientific and societal challenges, according to the school.
“École Polytechnique represents, for me, the academic and scientific excellence of our country,” Arnault said in a release. “I am proud to be able to contribute to the creation of the Institute for Mathematics and Fundamental Sciences. It was at École Polytechnique, and during my preparation for the entrance exams, that I learned the intellectual rigor and developed the vision that later guided my career as an entrepreneur. I also know the extent to which mathematics and the fundamental sciences can shape the world by inventing tomorrow what no one can even imagine today, particularly in addressing major societal challenges.”
