This end-of-year issue is largely dedicated to Poland, the third country where our Alumni Association is currently setting up a club aimed at reconnecting with Polish scientists who have lived in France and worked in CNRS laboratories. During the trip to Poland which our Association had organized in September, we hosted a dinner party attended by a dozen Polish scientists whom we hope will form the core of the future club. One of the following articles describes this friendly event and another article is a tourist's diary of whole trip.

Other articles contributed by Polish and French scientists provide examples of fruitful collaboration between the two countries. It is most appropriate to dedicate this issue to Poland, since it was one hundred years ago, in November 1911, that Marie Curie was awarded her second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, after the Nobel award for physics which she had jointly obtained with her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel. The Polish origins of this exceptional scientist and the close links which she maintained with her native country where she had spent the first 24 years of her life, are well known and are recalled in another article focusing on her personal and professional career.

This issue also includes a paper by Nicole Le Douarin in which she gives an account of her research on stem cells in a lecture delivered to our members in 2010. She gives a clear and comprehensive exposition of a much discussed scientific breakthrough: "Stem cells, a source of rejuvenation and their therapeutic possibilities".

A recent memorable event was the award of the Nobel prize for medicine to Jules Hoffmann. Our Alumni Association sends him our warmest congratulations. We would like to stress the care he took to recall the support he had continuously received from CNRS throughout his whole career. Just prior to the Nobel award, the CNRS had recognized his worth by bestowing on him France's highest scientific distinction, the CNRS Gold Medal for 2011.

For those of our members who do not regularly visit our website, I wish to highlight the improvements introduced by our dedicated Webmaster Philippe Pingand, who deserves our thanks. Go to our Home Page and click on "Contact", where you will gain immediate access to the names and E-mails of our regional representatives. You will thus easily be able to send them your requests for trips, visits and lectures, or inform them of your readiness to take part in activities such as explaining science to teenagers at school or retired senior citizens, or offering hospitality to visiting foreign scholars during their stay in your region, or staying in touch with them when they have returned home. On our home page too, you can access our Alumni Register and update, if need be, the entry which concerns you.

Since this issue will reach you towards the end of the year, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours health and happiness in 2012, with my warmest greetings.


Michel PETIT
President, CNRS Alumni Association