Jean Bricmont

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Jean Bricmont, Paris 2010

Jean Bricmont (born April 12, 1952 in Uccle ) is a Belgian mathematical physicist , university professor and political publicist . He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Catholic University of Leuven .

Life

Bricmont received his diploma in mathematics from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1973 and received his doctorate there in 1976 under Jean-Pierre Antoine ( Les inégalités de corrélation et leurs applications aux systèmes de spins classique ) He then conducted research at Rutgers University and taught as an assistant from 1979 to 1981 Professor at Princeton University . He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. There he worked as an assistant from 1981, from 1989 as assistant professor and from 1999 with a full professorship.

1981 to 1984 he was also a part-time professor at the Free University of Brussels. In 2007/08 he was visiting professor at the University of Paris-Dauphine, 1986/87 visiting professor at Rutgers University and in 1987 lecturer at Princeton University.

He dealt primarily with mathematical statistical mechanics, in particular with the application of renormalization group methods in probability theory, statistical mechanics, nonlinear partial differential equations and dynamic systems, often in collaboration with Antti Kupiainen .

As part of the Sokal affair , Bricmont published the book Impostures Intellectuelles (English Fashionable Nonsense ) together with Alan Sokal in 1997 . He also appears as a political publicist with an anti-imperalist orientation, who u. a. worked with Noam Chomsky and defended him in 2001 in the French press (Le Monde Diplomatique), when his advocacy of freedom of speech by Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson was heavily criticized. Bricmont takes a similar stance, who also opposed a law ( Loi Gayssot ) passed (but not yet ratified) by the French National Assembly , which criminalizes denial of genocide (see negationism ).

Bricmont wrote a. a. Forewords to French editions of books by Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Diana Johnstone . In his foreword to Gilad Atzmon's book The Wandering Who? he defended it against accusations of anti-Semitism and wrote that such accusations and above all the "unbelievable arrogance of Israeli politics" were responsible for the rising anti-Semitism. In his book Humanitarian Imperialism , Bricmont accuses the United States and its western allies of pursuing imperialist goals under the pretext of defending human rights, as he said in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. In an essay from 2013 Bricmont and Johnstone see calls for a possible intervention of the USA in Syria for humanitarian reasons mainly the representation of Israeli interests via an "Israel lobby" in the USA. In a 2006 article, Bricmont called for the “de- Zionization ” of the American spirit and described the “slow Zionist invasion” of what he said was Arab land with the aim of establishing Israel as the crucial and understandable reason for Israel's hate. Bricmont is a supporter of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel .

He has been a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences since 2004, receiving its A. Wetrems Prize in 1991 and the J. Deruyts Prize in 1996. In 2002 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing (Ergodicity and mixing of stochastic partial differential equations). From 2001 to 2006 he was President of the Association française pour l'information scientifique (AFIS), a French society against pseudosciences founded in 1968 .

From 1985 to 1987 and 1991 to 1993 he was on the editorial board of the Journal of Statistical Physics.

Fonts

  • Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l'homme, droit d'ingérence, droit du plus gone? , Editions Aden 2005, 2nd edition 2009 (English: Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War , Monthly Review Press 2007, translated by Diana Johnstone)
  • with Alan Sokal: Elegant nonsense. How postmodern thinkers abuse the sciences . Beck , Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45274-4 (French: Impostures intellectuelles . Paris 1997. Translated by Johannes Schwab and Dietmar Zimmer).
    • Fashionable nonsense. Postmodern Intellectuals ′ Abuse of Science . Picador, New York 1998, ISBN 0-312-19545-1 (English).
  • with Régis Debray : À l'ombre des lumières: Débat entre un philosophe et un scientifique , Odile Jacob, Collection Sciences, 2003.
  • with Julie Franck: Chomsky , les cahier de l'Herne, 2007
  • with Hervé Zwirn: Philosophy de la mécanique quantique , Vuibert, 2009
  • with Noam Chomsky: Raison contre pouvoir. Le pari de Pascal , L'Herne, Carnets, 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CV, University of Leuven, pdf
  2. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ Bricmont, La mauvaise réputation de Noam Chomsky, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2001
  4. ↑ La loi Gayssot est une régression juridique de plusieurs siècles, Bricmont interview by Silvia Cattori, Voltairenet , Brussels, May 16, 2007
  5. ^ Bricmont, Johnstone, The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla , Counterpunch, Sept. 13, 2013.
  6. ↑ The De-Zionization of the American Mind , Counterpunch, 12 August of 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Bricmont, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian mathematical physicist and political publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Uccle