I still remember the kind of dizziness that struck me. I was leaving an auditorium at the University of Montreal where Hubert Reeves had spoken to an audience made up mostly of students like me.
Published at 12:00 p.m.
“We are all stardust,” he told us with his eternal little shining eyes and that slight smile that never left him.
I had already read the sentence in his books. And I knew that the carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms that make up living things were formed billions of years ago in the hearts of stars and then catapulted into the universe during supernovae.
But when I heard Hubert Reeves say it in his soft and distinctive voice, it came as a shock to me.
Suddenly his statement was more than a great sentence (and it is one, it has to be said). It was also more than just scientific information. It was something I felt.
Between the university building and my tiny dorm room on the same campus, I looked up at the sky to see stars. I must have seen two or three of them through the city lights. It was enough to make me feel the immensity of the cosmos. And in comparison to feel my extreme, absurd and almost intoxicating smallness.
I had just tasted the magical touch of Hubert Reeves.
Since his death was announced on Friday, there has been much talk about how Hubert Reeves was a great popularizer. It is undeniable. The astrophysicist is one of the researchers who decided to leave the narrow circle of his colleagues to share his knowledge with the general public. He will always be a giant of popular science.
But the term “popularizer” seems almost reductive to me, as it obscures a fundamental dimension of his work.
Because Hubert Reeves did much more than just make us understand our ideas about the cosmos and later about nature and the ecological crisis.
He spoke to our emotions in a way that few scientists have.
One only has to read his books or listen to his lectures to understand that Hubert Reeves shared his knowledge with the aim of conveying to us something that was even more important to him: his wonder at the universe. .
PHOTO LOÏC VENANCE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Hubert Reeves in 2016. One only needs to have read his books or listened to his lectures to understand that Hubert Reeves shared his knowledge with the aim of conveying to us something that was even more important to him: his wonder of facing the universe .
“I wanted to give something to think about and understand,” he wrote on the back of Poussières d’étoiles, affirming that this book “wants to be an ode to the universe.”
In my case, the trick worked so well that this book, along with others, helped inspire me to study physics, which took up much of my young adult life.
Hubert Reeves’ ecological turn is part of the same desire to express his attachment to the beauty of the earth and his concern about the fragility of ecosystems.
“I pay attention to sounds and smells and awaken to the calm presence of the plant world. “I feel alive on the surface of planet Earth in the present moment of the evolution of the universe,” he writes in Malicorne, bridging the gap between astronomy and ecology with this always very personal perspective.
Among scientific concepts that could have been complex and disembodied, there has always been this return to human beings, to who we are, to the ways in which the world challenges and vibrates us. Hubert Reeves wanted to make us understand, to give us a feeling.
For me, his masterpiece remains his first popular book for adults, Patience in the Azure, as a summary of what he would develop in his subsequent works. I completely wore out my copy flipping through it and shoving it into my friends’ hands. I didn’t find it on Friday – I hope whoever kept it read it and enjoyed it.
By telling us that we are stardust, Hubert Reeves made it clear to us that we are nothing more than collections of atoms. Short temporary structures whose components, like Lego bricks, were used to build other structures before us and will take different forms after we die.
PHOTO MICHEL GRAVEL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
By telling us that we are stardust, Hubert Reeves made it clear to us that we are nothing more than collections of atoms. Short temporary structures whose components, like Lego bricks, were used to build other structures before us and will take different forms after we die.
Now it is Hubert Reeves’ turn to return to nature the atoms formed in the stars that allowed him to live on Earth for 91 years.
The miracle he gave us remains. Just like this feeling of better understanding – and appreciating – our place in the universe.