Profile
Lucien Heurtier
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About Me:
I live in Crawley, and work at King’s College London as a researcher, but I also love arts and music, and I enjoy very much nature and outdoor activities. I also love dancing and cooking!
When I was a kid I loved maths and was working hard to be good at it, people thought that was weird. Now I work on the Big Bang theory, and people say ‘waoooo so fascinating’, so it was worth it! 😉
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Well, let me tell you that being a scientist doesn’t mean giving up on having a fun personal life.
I enjoy playing the piano and the guitar, and I love singing. My wife is actually a professional pianist, which makes it even more fun as we can play music together. On occasion, I go with her hiking and fishing. I love partner dancing, such as swing, rock’n’roll, lindy-hop, salsa, and blues. I also like painting and playing games with friends and family.
I am quite a fun and creative person according to my friends so believe me: doing science doesn’t necessarily make you sound like a boring person to others 😉
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My pronouns are:
he/him
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My Work:
I am a particle physicist and cosmologist, trying to understand our Universe’s history and discovering dark matter!
Have you heard about the Big Bang? About Black Holes? About Dark Matter?
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the chat (don’t worry, we won’t go faster than light!)
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I try to answer to two very important questions, that are:
- What is dark matter? In particular, is it made of particles?
- How did the Universe evolve since the Big Bang until now?
To do so, I explore many possible hypotheses. I come up with fun and original ideas, and do calculations to see whether my ideas can be tested with experiments or observations. I then discuss with experimentalists and astrophysicists to see if my idea could be correct or whether it was not a good one.
More specifically, I work a lot these days on primordial black holes and cosmic inflation. Come talk to me to know what that is!
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My Typical Day:
My day always starts with a good breakfast around 8 am (never forget that part, a day is long!).
A few emails to answer and administrative things to deal with, and it’s maybe 9:30 am. Then start the exciting stuff:
- some interesting readings (the new articles that appeared today, some books I need for my research)
- some meetings (working alone is not always fun), this could bring up to lunch.
- A good lunch then, and a tea/coffee (also good to not chat only about science!).
- In the afternoon, some “me” time, where I can compute stuff that I need for my research. Try out some ideas and see if they work. Write a new code to calculate things, and do simulations.
- Around 6 pm I’m usually getting tired and go home.
Sometimes I also teach, or go to conferences abroad, which is a lot of fun too, but I’d need to write a lot more to tell you what I do then…
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Well, to be honest, my days are never the same.
Sometimes it’s just meetings all day, sometimes it is only discussions because a colleague and I are excited about some idea we got. There are some days which are less fun with applications for funding or my for my next job somewhere else in the world, but that doesn’t happen every day, luckily!
Overall, being a researcher is a lot of fun. It involves a lot of spontaneity and creativity and really feels more like being an artist than being an engineer.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would like to use such a prize to fund an outreach event that I have been thinking about for a while, which I called :
‘Painting the Universe’
The idea is simple:
- Go to classrooms in elementary schools and high schools and talk for about an hour to students about the Universe. I would explain to them how big it is, and what we can observe in it. I would show them some of these beautiful pictures that have been recently taken by the James Web Space Telescope, explain to them what they show, and tell them exciting stories about the cosmos, that they will for sure remember. Ideally, I will try to get students involved by asking them to volunteer to do little human-size experiments. (use a ball and an elastic to understand the gravitational attraction, use a bike pump to see that pressure induces heat when a star forms, etc.)
- Provide pupils with painting material (canvas, brushes, and acrylic paint, which is mainly what I need the funding for) so that they can paint what they find the most beautiful about the Universe. A rocket? A shooting star? A galaxy cluster? An astronaut? Whatever makes them excited. I would show on the wall pictures of different kinds, and they will have to paint what they imagine ‘their’ Universe to look like.
- Let them come back home with their own painting of the Universe on a real canvas so that they can show and explain to their parents and siblings what they have understood about it.
Such an event has three main objectives:
- Make young students excited about how ‘beautiful’ science can be;
- Make them realize that they can understand, with their own words and pictures, what happens in our Universe;
- Let them picture their own ‘vision’ of the Universe by painting it, and most importantly bring this vision back home, with them, on a canvas that they may look at regularly while growing up, thinking ‘this got me excited once’…
The region where I live has a very low rate of pupils ending up studying STEM after they leave school. The only way to make a change is to fire young people’s imagination about science. I do believe that astrophysics is a powerful topic to achieve this goal, as it manipulates objects that are visually fascinating and can be described in terms that any young person can understand without too much effort.
I am thrilled that the “I’m a Scientist” event could help me implement this project.
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Education:
I did all my education in France.
I grew up in Clamart, a suburb of Paris, where I went to school and high school. Although these schools were not the most prestigious ones in the Paris area, my good grades got me selected for an undergraduate program in mathematics and physics at one of the best Universities in Paris.
After two years of studying there, I passed a selective exam to enter an Engineering school in Paris.
I learnt a lot there and discovered the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which literally blew my mind. I discovered then how deeply mathematics and physics were related.
I then entered a master’s program in fundamental physics and obtained an MSc in theoretical physics from École Normale Supérieure de Paris in 2012.
I obtained a PhD in theoretical particle physics and cosmology at École Polytechnique in 2015. That’s when I started to work on dark matter and early Universe cosmology. From that point, there was no doubt for me: I wanted to become a researcher in Physics.
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Qualifications:
MSc in Theoretical Physics
PhD in Theoretical Physics
Qualification de Droit Commun (Conseil National des Universités) – a qualification that allows teaching at french universities at the professor level.
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Work History:
2023 – Today: Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London, UK
2020 – 2023: Postdoctoral Research Associate at Durham University, UK
2017 – 2020: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Arizona, USA
2015 – 2017: Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium
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Current Job:
I am a postdoctoral research associate. That means that I primarily do research, but I also spend time doing some teaching and participating in some outreach events.
I work on Big Bang cosmology and particle physics. I am a theorist, meaning that I don’t run myself experiments or use telescopes, but I instead build theoretical models, do calculations, I run simulations on a computer (or a super-computer) to understand what are the fundamental laws of nature, what particles may exist that we have not discovered yet, how the Universe evolves, etc.
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Employer:
The Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology group at King’s College London
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Dancing-mind cosmologist
What did you want to be after you left school?
I wanted to become a math teacher in high school then. But instead I became a researcher in physics at the University :)
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really myself, because I had the chance to have parents that constantly supported me. I had a hard time though because my parents got divorced when I was 7 and it required me a lot of efforts to keep studying while there were many cries at home for a while, but I succeeded. I also observed a lot of my comrades that were in trouble at school. I helped a lot of my peers when I was a child by either by talking to them or helping them with their homework.
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I think I would become a high-school teacher, which was my childhood goal.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Serge Reggiani (a french singer from the old generation, his songs always make me shiver from emotion)
What's your favourite food?
Cheese Fondue
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1 - Become a professor at a good University, 2 - Finally manage to write and arrange my own songs, and 3 - Be able to travel to space one day
Tell us a joke.
What do ions say when they fall in love? I've got my ion you.
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