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The United States, the world’s leading scientific power, is France’s number-one scientific and technical partner. Cooperation between the two nations takes many forms: collaboration between laboratories; institutional networks comprised of entities and universities in both countries; exchange programs that welcome French students and researchers to U.S. campuses as well as key American scientific figures at our most prestigious institutions; the establishment of French biotech and computer startups in the United States; and U.S. investment in French high technologies.

We are America’s fourth-largest scientific collaborator after Canada, Japan and Germany. More than 5,000 joint publications come out each year in our two countries. French physics enjoys a particularly stellar reputation, along with mathematics, chemistry, fundamental and clinical biology, and economics.

Many of our Nobel prize laureates have had ties with U.S. laboratories at some point in their careers. While the influence of the Curies, Perrin and Broglie is still felt, French physics is anchored in the science of today, with such significant achievements as Alfred Kastler’s discovery and development of optical methods for studying hertzian resonances in atoms (1966), Louis Néel’s work with antiferromagnetism (1970), Pierre-Gilles de Gennes’s work in condensed matter physics (1991), Georges Charpac’s innovative particle chambers at the CERN (1992) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji’s development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light (1997).

French biology can claim such luminaries as Pasteur Institute scientists François Jacob, André Lwoff, Jacques Monod and the great immunologist Jean Dausset, best known for his work on transplants. In chemistry too, the tradition goes back to the Curies and Henri Moissan, who discovered fluorine, but more recently, Jean-Marie Lehn built supra-molecular structures with two American colleagues (1987).

A place of honor should also be reserved for the economist Maurice Allais, who revolutionized free-market economics with his theory of markets and the efficient utilization of resources (1988).

The Fields Medal is one of the most prestigious international mathematics awards. Among the great French mathematicians who have earned this honor are Maxim Kontsevich (1998), Pierre-Louis Lions and Jean Christophe Yoccoz (1994), Alain Connes (1982), René Thom (1958), Jean-Pierre Serre (1954 and Laurent Schwartz (1950).

Thus ongoing and productive exchanges between the American and French scientific communities continue to move forward, based on cooperation and shared respect./.