Daniel Rouan has focused his instrumental research on the development of infrared astronomy in France, on the ground and in space, and more particularly on high angular resolution and high contrast imagery. He is the inventor of the four-quadrant coronagraph, installed on several instruments. He founded the concept of Diophantine optics, several variations of which have been tested and validated.
Involved in the development of several space projects (ISO, CoRoT, JWST) or instruments for very large ground-based telescopes (VLT-NAOS, VLT-SPHERE), it uses these techniques to discover and study exoplanets : it is thus co-discoverer of some forty extrasolar planets. He also studies the physics of the inter- and circum-stellar medium, the regions of intensive star formation and the environment of the active nuclei of galaxies, in particular at the center of the Milky Way : he belongs to the international team which has provided definitive proof of the existence of an ultra-massive black hole 4 million times the mass of the sun.
Daniel Rouan was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 2005. Member or president of several international committees or councils, he directed the DEA of Astrophysics, then the doctoral school of Astronomy-Astrophysics of Ile-de-France . He was president of the La main à la pâte foundation for 8 years, before becoming vice-president of the French Physical Society in 2022, on the eve of its 150th anniversary.
Elected president of the SFPon March 18, 2023, Daniel Rouan will continue to support the many initiatives launched by the volunteers of the association, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.
▪ His experience as president of La Main à la pâte will lead him to favor educational and knowledge transmission actions.
▪ Daniel Rouan is keen, for example, to strongly support SFP’s involvement in the Year of Physics that will open at the start of the 2023-2024 school year.
▪ The disturbing progression of false science, irrationality and conspiracy theories is, in the same vein, a concern that he considers major.
▪ Another of the values of the SFP that he plans to support is that of the place of women in our community : how to strengthen it in practice but also how to fight against sexism and harassment that are still too present in the research community.
▪ Finally, he wishes to find ways to involve the French Physical Society’s board of directors even more in the association’s decision-making processes and strategic orientations.
Also read :
https://lesia.obspm.fr/Daniel-Rouan-et-l-aventure-de-l.html