Julien Bobroff

Biography

Julien Bobroff is a professor at Université Paris Sud (Orsay). Since 2013, he has led the “Physique Autrement” research team at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS and Université Paris Sud). He also teaches physics and popularization at university level. Previously, from 1994 to 2013, he worked in the “New States of Matter” team, studying the quantum properties of matter at low temperatures, in particular superconductors and quantum magnets.

Conference: How long does it take to make a discovery?

When Archimedes dived into his bathtub and exclaimed “Eureka!”, he may well have made the fastest discovery in the history of science! How long does it take these days to make a major discovery? Sometimes, the key experiment or stroke of genius takes just a few hours, like the discovery of superconductors or nanotubes; sometimes, on the contrary, it takes decades, like the Higgs boson or blue LEDs. But each time, this Eureka moment conceals years of toil, attempts, failures, reflection and learning. A researcher’s time is a strange thing: it can drag on forever, then suddenly accelerate sharply, then even branch out, sometimes long afterwards, to be rewarded. Perhaps this is what makes research so unique, and why it sometimes seems so strange. We’ll tell you how this time manifests itself, and how researchers endure or play with it, from the discovery of MRI, 80 years in the making, to that of fullerenes, only 10 days!