Incipit

We begin! Pierre starts as an Assistant Scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials. He will try his very best not to embarrass his incredibly patient past (Valerio Olevano, Didier Mayou, Jeffrey B. Neaton, Chris A. Marianetti, and Andrew J. Millis) and present (Stephen Gray) mentors, but will also keep this quote of Grothendiek in mind:

Discovery is a child’s privilege. I mean the small child, the child who is not afraid to be wrong, to look silly, to not be serious, and to act differently from everyone else. He is also not afraid that the things he is interested in are in bad taste or turn out to be different from his expectations, from what they should be, or rather he is not afraid of what they actually are. He ignores the silent and flawless consensus that is part of the air we breathe – the consensus of all the people who are, or are reputed to be, reasonable. —Alexander Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles (English version)

We look forward to years of candid discovery, and, while we can’t guarantee our research will be impactful, we can however promise to make honest mistakes rather than dishonest ones along the way.

Quickly, before we get started: Thank you, all. We love to tell ourselves we deserve it, and whether it is true or not, experience tells us stochasticity does govern most of our trajectories. Thanks to all the Maxwell demons out there, who, regardless how briefly or decisively they acted, made it possible. I won’t forget any of you, whether you want me to or not. Merci.