All about David Alexander Madore

[Une version française de cette page est également disponible.]

Identity

Last name:
Madore
First and middle names:
David Alexander
Date and time of birth:
(this means: Tuesday, August 3rd, 1976, at 7:40AM Paris local time)
Place of birth:
Paris, France (13th arrondissement, at the “clinique Isis”, 19 boulevard Arago)
Gender:
male
Photograph:
vide contra[Photograph]; see also this page for more photographs of me.
Eye color:
medium blue (actually, my right eye is of a slightly lighter shade than my left eye)
Hair color:
light blond
Height:
1.74m (that's 5′8″ in these ridiculous US units)
Weight:
65.5kg (that's 144lb in these ridiculous US units)
Citizenship:
French (by birth, through my mother) and Canadian (also by birth, through my father)
Father:
John Andrew Madore
Mother:
Geneviève Panaud
Paternal grandparents:
Andrew Francis Madore (deceased) and Eunice Lilian Arthur (deceased)
Maternal grandparents:
Robert Panaud (deceased) and Thérèse Seigneuret (deceased)

Contact information

The most reliable way to contact me is by email. If you need to phone me, you should at least try my apartment's phone before you try my cell phone. If you need to send me regular mail, my Paris address can be used, but if you are sending me something related to my work, use my address at work. If you just want a little chat, ICQ may be a way.

Email address:
david[plus]www[at sign]madore[dot]org
Cellular phone:
+33-6-98-03-41-80 (Bouygues)
Personal address in Paris:
11 rue Simonet
F75013 Paris
France
Personal phone number in Paris:
+33-1-45-88-39-61
Parents' personal address in Orsay:
14 avenue du Grand Mesnil
F91400 Orsay
France
Parents' personal phone:
+33-1-69-28-15-82
Work address:
École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications
Département Informatique et Réseaux
46, rue Barrault
F75634 Paris cedex 13
France
Office phone:
+33-1-45-81-78-82
Web site:
You are already .
Professional Web page:
is .
Social networks:
I'm , and .
ICQ UIN:
168950339
MSN:
davidamadore[at sign]hotmail[dot]com
PGP public key:
has ID 1024D/0B2790DE.

Work

What?
I'm a mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry, with applications to cryptography.
Where?
Since , I am maître de conférences (which roughly translates to associate professor: a research and teaching position) at the .

Studies

Institution:
I am an alumnus of the , and of the ; I also taught in both places.
Doctorate:
I passed my PhD with as my thesis advisor. My thesis dissertation is about Cubic hypersurfaces: rational equivalence, R-equivalence, and weak approximation.
Past studies and diplomata:
See my curriculum vitae.
ENS class:
C/S 96 (I guess this would be called graduating class of 2000 in some places)

Personal stuff

Alternate names:
I have essentially two: “Ruxor” and “Gro-Tsen”. Ruxor (the name comes from an old novel of mine—but it's really not worth reading) is a kind of alternate identity; I use it as my nick on IRC and elsewhere. Gro-Tsen (the name has a complicated story) is my character as a Zen master; I use it as my nick among my friends of the ENS.
Kinsey score:
6 (this means I'm gay)
Status:
Living with my boyfriend
Brothers & Sisters:
Biologically, none. However, Émeric “Mouton” Tourniaire and myself have adopted each other as brothers, so effectively I now have two (younger) brothers and three (younger) sisters.
Hobbies:
spending too much time in front of computers; reading literature and writing some of mine; going to movies; listening to music (mainly classical / film music / Celtic, but I dabble in other genres too, like disco or techno); walking around Paris (especially at night); intellectual masturbation of all kinds (only intellectual, you ask? well, I think you can guess the answer to that)
Favorite books:
  • Jorge Luis Borges: El Aleph (The Aleph)
  • Jean Giraudoux: La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (The Trojan War will not take place)
  • José-Maria de Heredia: Les Trophées
  • Richard Bach: Jonathan Livingston Seagull
  • Jacques Monod: Le Hasard et la Nécessité (Chance and Necessity)
  • Italo Calvino: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler)
  • Georges Perec: La Vie, Mode d'emploi (Life: A User's Manual)
  • Victor Hugo: Bug-Jargal
  • Umberto Eco: Baudolino
  • Isaac Asimov: Second Foundation
  • Douglas Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach
  • Douglas Adams: The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • Jean Racine: Bérénice
  • Armistead Maupin: Tales of the City
  • Gottlob Lessing: Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise)
  • Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince
  • William Shakespeare: A Midsummer-Night's Dream
  • J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
Some people I greatly admire:
Isaac Asimov; Élisabeth Badinter; Robert Badinter; Jorge Luis Borges; Willy Brandt; René Cassin; Noam Chomsky; Charles Darwin; Bette Davis; Richard Dawkins; Umberto Eco; Stephen Fry; Caius Gracchus; Hadrian; David Hilbert; Douglas Hofstadter; Victor Hugo; Michelangelo; Bertrand Russell; Alan Turing; Leonardo da Vinci; Oscar Wilde
My sense of humor:
I'm not sure how one can describe a sense of humor, but let me mention that I very much like Douglas Adams (The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Woody Allen, Alain Chabat, Philippe Geluck (Le Chat), Gary Larson (The Far Side), the Monty Pythons, The Onion (especially their horoscopes) and Charles Schulz (Peanuts); on the other hand, there are things that I do not find funny, for example nearly all puns and plays on words, or scenic jokes involving food (such as the “pie-in-the-face” joke).
If I were:
a letter: A; a color: sky blue; a season: spring; a stone: a lapis-lazuli; an alchemist's element: air; a metal: nickel; a gas: argon; an object: a pillow; an animal: a lion; a tree: a willow or a poplar; a flower: a petunia; a fruit: a peach; a taste: vanilla; a drink: milk; a dish: roast chicken; a sport: volley-ball; a weapon: a bow; a capital sin: pride; a feeling: amusement; a myth: Prometheus bound; a Greek god: Apollo or Hermes; a Fantasy character race: a Half-Elf; a Fantasy character class: a wizard; a fiction character: Hari Seldon; a historical character: Hadrian; a painting: Magritte's Domain of Arnheim or Poussin's Shepherds of Arcadia; a sculpture: Michelangelo's David, of course; a word: “clear”; and all in all: eclectic
Some things I like:
  • Sleeping. Sleeping is the single thing we spend the greatest amout of time doing (well, at any rate, for me it is), so we might as well enjoy it. And I do. So here's a nice little quote: There are two pleasant moments in a day: in the evening when we go to bed, and in the morning when we don't get up.
  • Wasting time by chatting about anything.
  • People who are able to talk about more than a single topic (a rare gift, verily).
  • Intellectually elegant solutions to problems of all kinds (of course, I reserve the right to define what I mean by “intellectually elegant”).
  • People who remember how to smile.
  • People who have this marvelous quality that they are able to remain calm at all times without seeming indifferent or uninterested, nor altogether too serious.
  • Modern architecture: spacious buildings made mostly of glass, for example.
  • Consulting dictionaries.
  • Cows. I mean, the animal, Bos taurus: in the first place, cows give milk, and milk is the drink of the gods; and besides, cows have such lovingly placid eyes.
  • Sheep. I mean, the animal, Ovis aries: I was once viciously attacked by an ewe when I was small, but, since then, I've been shown that sheep are tender and gentle animals. Incidentally, I have a stuffed sheep in my room, which was given to me by friends (the kind of friends that, having which, I do not need enemies): I lovingly named it “cutlet”.
  • Ducks (I mean the live animal, not the food): ducks are ridiculously pompous and mindless creatures, so I feel a great kinship to them.
  • Chinese, Indian and Italian food; umami taste and coriander.
Some things I dislike:
  • People who try to bestow their moral standards upon others. Fanatics of all kinds, but religious (or moral) fanatics above all.
  • People who take me for an idiot without admitting it (there's nothing wrong with taking me for an idiot so long as you admit it).
  • People who have no defects: as Elizabeth Taylor once said, they usually tend to have some pretty annoying virtues.
  • People who have the same defects as I do: so I can't blame them as I would like.
  • Utterly gratuitous laws and rules.
  • Hair splitting in more than sixteen parts (up to sixteen is all right).
  • Brussels sprout: there are various vegetables that I dislike (celery, for instance), but none is as deeply repulsive to me as the brussels sprout.
My handwriting:
looks like this[Handwriting].
My voice:
You can hear me read Athalie's Dream or Baudelaire's warning.
My personality:
isn't entirely pleasant; here's an attempt to describe it in words.
My autobiography:
is pretty long (note that it is in French).