Jean-Paul Delahaye

Biography

Jean-Paul Delahaye is Professor Emeritus at the University of Lille 1 (Sciences et technologies) and a researcher at the CNRS laboratory Centre de recherche en informatique signal et automatique de Lille (CRISTAL). His work focuses on sequence transformation algorithms (State thesis), the use of logic in artificial intelligence, computational game theory and algorithmic information theory, with particular applications to finance. He is the author of some fifteen books, including Merveilleux nombres premiers: voyage au cœur de l’arithmétique, Inventions mathématiques. Jouer avec l’arithmétique et la géométrie, Culturomics: le numérique et la culture and Jeux finis et infinis. In 1998, he received the Prix d’Alembert from the Société Mathématique de France, and in 1999, the Auteur de la Culture Scientifique award from the French Ministry of Education and Research. He writes the monthly column “Logique et calcul” for the magazine Pour la science.

Conference: Do computers change time?

Performing calculations takes time, but less and less! Gordon Moore’s famous law states that the computing and memory capacities of computing devices double every eighteen months or so. What took a year to calculate forty years ago now takes a million times less, or 31 seconds. This reduction in computing timescales has a multitude of consequences, not least the possibility of creating cryptocurrencies that function on their own without any central authority. What about tomorrow?