La médaille de l'ADION, fondée par Jean-Claude Pecker en 1962, honore chaque année une personnalité scientifique de notoriété mondiale, dont les contributions ont marqué de façon importante les recherches développées à l'Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur.

C'est Monsieur Michaël Perryman, Directeur Scientifique à l'Agence Spatiale Européenne (ESA), qui a reçu le jeudi 25 juin 1998, à 15h, à l'Observatoire de Nice, la médaille 1997 de l'ADION.

Michael Perryman est un britannique diplômé de l'Université de Cambridge. C'est un astronome spécialiste des observations d'objets variés tels que les pulsars, les radio-sources, les quasars et les Galaxies de Seyfert. A partir de 1980, il rentre à l'ESTEC (Centre Européen de Recherche et de Technologie Spatiales), le plus grand établissement de l'ESA, dont le siège est à Noordwijk aux Pays-Bas où il assure la direction scientifique du projet HIPPARCOS. Ce projet a consisté au lancement d'un satellite dont l'objectif scientifique était d'établir une carte très précise du ciel en fournissant un catalogue de 120 000 étoiles.

Michaël Perryman a grandement contribué au succès de la mission grâce à son insistance et à sa rigueur dans toutes les phases du projet. L'Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur a été fortement impliqué dans ce projet puisqu'une équipe scientifique était responsable d'un groupe européen chargé du suivi de l'expérience et de l'analyse des observations faites par le satellite.

La médaille a été remise à Michaël Perryman par Monsieur François Barlier, Astronome titulaire, représentant le directeur de l'Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur. Le discours d'éloges au candidat a été prononcé par François Mignard, directeur du département CERGA de l'OCA. (Son discours est reproduit ci-après).

Michaël Perryman a présenté ses travaux dans sa conférence intitulée :

La cérémonie s'est terminée autour d'un buffet offert par l'ADION.

Dear Michael, Dear Colleagues,

It is obviously a real pleasure to introduce Michael Perryman as recipient of the ADION medal for 1997, but, at the same time, I am somewhat embarassed by the daunting task of penning the praise address for someone I know so well, in some respects, and so little in many more, and for whom, I feel obliged by his unvaluable role as a forceful leader of the Hipparcos project over so many years.

Let me recall that the idea behind the ADION medal is that it should primarily distinguish a first rank scientist and secondly, a one, whose activities have, or had, repercussions on the research carried out at the Observatory. To no contest, you qualify on both counts with flying colors.

Apart from personal recollection or from fully impersonal scientific papers, my own files are really scant in content regarding your background before Hipparcos. However, pitying informants have made up for my deficiency.

As a British-born subject, you went to the best place in England to receive a scientific education and to start a career in research, by being admitted to the prestigious St.John's College in Cambridge. Among its title of fame, one must recall that St.John's challenged Oxford in a rowing race in 1829, the first of an unbroken series. Here, besides a wide ranging and top level formal training in science, you developed also, as far as I know, a keen interest in caving. For the audience, I mean speleology, because St.John's is also renowned for its noteworthy wine cellar, that any French would at once mistake for a 'cave'. Anyway, emerging from the Totes Gebirge, you know what I mean, you graduated at St John's under the benevolent shadow cast by its most famous fellow, the physicist Dirac, and started your PhD with Malcom Longair, as supervisor. You probably were (unwillingly ?) one of the guinea-pigs of his lectures which eventually turned into the much acclaimed ' Theoretical concepts in Physics '.

By inclination or personal taste, your research took naturally the direction which has become the trademark of Cambridge, with investigations in the nature of radiosources, quasars and optical identifications of objects of the famous 3C Catalogue, which led to a first publication in Nature with Sir Martin Ryle as co-author. You could have had a worst start !

Followed several papers on observations of radio sources and seyfert galaxies, when your career took a decisive twist as you joined ESA in the early 80s, to embark on a long and risky project in space astrometry, only few weeks after the Scientific Program Committee of ESA turned down by 10 votes and one abstention, a recommendation of its Scientific Advisory Committee and decided to fund the Astrometry mission Hipparcos. This marked the real start of an exceptional undertaking.

Appointed Project Scientist, your duty came to an end when the final Catalogue and the related products were made available to the astronomical community in June 1997. This was the culmination of a long and extremely complex chain of events, from the mission design, the satellite manufacture, the dramatic launch on a rambling orbit, the first sphere solutions and the first intermediate catalogues, leading to the impatience of both the astronomers and the ESA high ranking officials.

During the intervening years, (17 years), first as Project Scientist and later as Project Manager, you displayed a unfailling energy and dedication to the mission with a unique and obsessive policy : to get the best data first, and to get the best from the data, next.

Admittedly there were many teams of scientists, engineers and technicians involved in the actual number crunching, several of them at this very place, and they all got full credit thanks to your attention, but you were a the helm, keeping an eye open to avoid the reefs that could have wrecked the ship, driving the European Scientific community toward a much acclaimed feat.

In this role you demonstrated exceptional managerial skills, going from the boldest vision on the instrument capabilities and on the Catalogue contents, inspiring the participants with the highest ambitions and simultaneously displaying an utmost care for the details, on such down-to-earth matters like " should this column header be typeset in boldface 10 pt computer roman font two inch wide or in etc etc ... " . Let me remind that there were several hundred columns like that and as many fields.

The success was at the end of the road with two large astrometric and photometric Catalogues of unprecedented accuracy splendildly bound in a 17-volume publication, spotted at first glance in many libraires and offices all over the world.

Such an achievement is all the more astounding that in parallel, you published several research papers, doubtless worked out during a modern revival of the epagomenal days outside the time, formerly granted by the Egyptian calendar. I noticed, besides several epoch making papers based on Hipparcos data, a long standing interest on new photon counting detectors. Lately you laid down the theoretical foundations for the use of Josephson junctions to this aim, a prototype of which is now being tested in a basement of ESTEC and will prove soon that one can do spectro-photometry without loosing photons.

But science and technology are always on the move, and before the end of the Hipparcos project, you co-authored with Lennart Lindegren a proposal for a more ambitious mission, hundred times more precise than Hipparcos, with impressive capabilities, a topic we will hear more about shortly during your talk.

Without a time to breathe you have been appointed chairman of the Science Advisory Group for GAIA, putting in this new challenge the same enthusiasm and commitment for the highest and best science, knowing in advance that it is an endless pursuit since, as stated by the biologist J.B.S Haldane, "not only is the Universe queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose".

Going further in this direction, will drag us too far away, and today is just the time to celebrate. I would only add to conclude, that the members of the Observatory of the Cote d'Azur able or not to attend today, are proud and honoured to have the opportunity to express their gratitude and to distinguish with the Adion award an influential scientist who contributed so much to a lasting and resounding masterpiece and is on his way to score again.

Thank you again Michael,

Francois Mignard

Director of CERGA

Av. Copernic

06130 Grasse (France)

tel : (33) [0]4 93 40 53 82 + +

fax : (33) [0]4 93 40 53 33 + +

email : mignard@obs-azur.fr