Daniel Kunth

Biography

Daniel Kunth is Director of Research Emeritus at the CNRS. He has spent most of his career at the Institut d’astrophysique de Paris, but also spent many years at ESO (European Southern Observatory) in Chile, Switzerland and Caltech (California). He has carried out numerous missions with the world’s largest telescopes, and since 1991 has made extensive use of the Hubble Space Telescope. His main interest is the study of galaxy evolution and formation. He has proposed an original approach for observing hydrogen radiation emitted in the ultraviolet. This emission makes it possible to probe the near and distant universe. In 1991, convinced that the accumulation of knowledge without sharing remains a futile activity, he became involved in the dissemination of knowledge and was the initiator of Starry Night. His cross-disciplinary approach draws on a variety of techniques and disciplines: lectures, debates, participation in art-science or science-society meetings, writing columns, books, designing exhibitions, collaborating on films…

Conference: Can we live without a calendar?

In 1582, a change of calendar overturned all habits. Julius Caesar’s calendar, in force for fifteen centuries, was no longer appropriate. There was a 10-day discrepancy with the expected date of spring, and the situation could only get worse. Pope Gregory XII decided to eliminate 10 days from October 1582! What about today? In the age of satellite-controlled GPS, our watches forget that the Earth doesn’t go round, and our calendar seems set in stone. It unerringly regulates our actions, codifies the past and prefigures our future. However, the passage to the year 2000 was a source of fear, due to possible computer malfunctions, and marked the end of a millennium. We no longer know how to tell time by the sun, and live in a new dependency. Some people want slowness and imprecision. Are we synchronized with our calendar? Can we live without it?