I was extremely fortunate to be appointed to the prestigious Chaire Internationale de Recherche Blaise Pascal for the two-year period starting 1 December 2001.  This required simply that I spend twelve months in Paris, distributed over these two years, and that I give a course of lectures, and a final lecture aimed at the 'grand public'.  In the event, I spent the periods December 2001-April 2002 and September 2002-March 2003 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and I lectured on Topological Fluid Dynamics at the Institut Henri Poincaré during the second period.  I gave the grand-public lecture on 4 November 2003,  an occasion when lectures were also given by Patrick Huerre, Yves Couder  (who was starting his exciting work on bouncing droplets and wave/particle duality at the time of my visit) and Tony Maxworthy.

 

My wife and I again rented the familiar apartment in the Rue du Pot-de-Fer to cover these periods, which bridged my retirement as Director of the Isaac Newton Institute in 2001 and as Professor at the University of Cambridge (obligatory at the age of 67)  in 2002.  (I gave my final course of lectures in Cambridge during the Michaelmas Term 2002 -- see the set of Part II Limericks).