4 December 2025

11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Amphi Grand Kursaal

Nicolas Gauvrit

Nicolas Gauvrit has a triple training in mathematics (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon), psychology (Université Paris-Saint-Denis) and cognitive science (Ecole Polytechnique/Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Cognitives). He conducts research on human reasoning at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He is a member of the Société Française de Statistique and the Association Française pour l’Information Scientifique. He is the author of some 100 articles and 12 scientific books. In recent years, he has spoken to various media on the use of statistics, gender differences, reasoning and intelligence (France Culture, France Inter, Europe 1, Le Monde, Slate, Pour la Science, National Geographic…).

Can we remember everything? The limits of memory

Some people seem to be able to memorize endless texts without ever reaching the limits of human memory. From London cab drivers who know every street in their city to those who memorize pi decimals so numerous that it takes hours to recite them… there must be a limit to this accumulation? We’ll start by differentiating several types of memory: working memory, short-term memory, episodic memory… and we’ll see that each has specific limits, which are expressed in very different ways. For some, it’s complexity that prevails, or duration. For others, it’s precision that suffers first. What’s certain is that memory champions of one type or another perform feats that never cease to amaze us.