Some Hidden Aspects of Philippe Lemaire

When the LPSP saw its proposal for an experiment selected on OSO I (to become OSO 8 once launched), in January 1971, if my memory serves me right, Philippe Lemaire gave us the opportunity to deploy an unsuspected, complementary talent of his remarkable impassivity.

Hughes Aircraft (Los Angeles), the manufacturer of the satellite, had brought together for several days the scientific and technical teams of the laboratoires selected to launch the project. Obviously, all the presentations and discussions were done in English. The turn came for Philippe Lemaire to explain how to align and to adjust the LPSP instrument with that of the LASP, both placed on a platform pointed towards the sun.

As regards the handling of the language of Shakespeare, French people are in general poor speakers (and writers !). During my career, I could note, with notable exceptions, that the majority of the researchers having made their Ph.D with Blamont reproduced his contempt of a correct pronounciation of English. Admittedly, they are not the ones.

In short, Philippe Lemaire launched out in detailed explanations, in a respectful silence it seemed to to me, in front of fifty participants at least. Progressively with his talk, I saw the face of my neighbor, an engineer from Goddard, to give increasing signs of perplexity. I leaned towards him and ask what worried him. He said to me: "I do not understand a single word from this gentleman"

At this time, I heard Philippe Lemaire, saying very naturally : "to make this alignment, you take an autocollimatrice lunette...". I let to you imagine the face of my neighbor and of some others.

Of course, that did not prevent Philippe Lemaire from making this experiment in good intelligence with all the colleagues of the LASP, NASA, Hughes Aircraft, nor to continue the career that everbody knows.

It was the time of the flower power, of the topless and bottomless, of the posters shops saturated with incense smoke where one could buy a picture of Nixon, then the US president, posting his usual swindler face, with this legend: " Would you buy an used car to this guy ?". (It was more groovy than now, wasn’t it ?)

At the end of the afternoon, the Hughes Aircraft engineers queued at the telephone to inform their wives of the regrettable prolongation of the meeting. Then they took us along to the next strip tease joint where, if you ordered several jugs of beer before 6 pm, the pizza was free and in plenty. I acknowledge that I don’t remember if Philippe Lemaire formed part of these forwardings...

To finish and to come back to my linguistic considerations, I think that Philippe Lemaire, while making progress the knowledge of the sun, on the other hand, he took part in the worldwide degradation of the English language. But isn't it the fate which Latin underwent with the expansion then the decline of the Roman empire? The empires pass, the sun abides, the enigmatic smile of Philippe Lemaire remains to us.