Here is a little anecdote: I met Ludovic Patey at the École normale supérieure that we both entered in 2009. Among our classmates, Ludovic was easily the best p

Here is a little anecdote: I met Ludovic Patey at the École normale supérieure that we both entered in 2009. Among our classmates, Ludovic was easily the best programmer and mastered a lot of different technologies (from advanced web stuff down to assembly languages), so we were all quite surprised when he chose to turn to pure mathematics… But then during his PhD he has been immensely successful (invited as keynote speaker to conferences, praised by peers, and an impressive list of journal publications). A few weeks ago, he has been ranked first in the CNRS 2016 recruitment competition, which is internationally competitive. When that competition started he hadn't even graduated from his PhD yet! Which means he (deservedly) bypassed the cumbersome post-doc phase by which virtually all young researchers must go through these days. This time, none of us were surprised :) !