Obituary: Memories of Gérard Langlet (compiled Camacho)

VECTOR Vol.13 No.4

Memories of Gérard Langlet compiled by Anthony Camacho

The Vector working group decided that we could not do justice to Gérard Langlet in an obituary from our own resources. Maybe we will reprint something from Les Nouvelles d APL or elsewhere when we see what people write. We agreed to collect mementoes and so sent out email messages asking people to contribute a paragraphto includein the collection.

Wehad manyapologies from people whofelt their English wasn t up to it or who didn t know Gérard well enough. Below are the contributions we have received so far that wefeel able to include.

Dieter Lattermann (APL Club of Germany) While preparing for APL96 at LancasterI receiveda letter from Gérard from the hospital. He offered a talk on the famous difference scan , which he considered to be the key to the theory of everything . The programme committee initially was hesitant to accepthis offer. There wasa feeling that not much new information could be expected. However, it was eventually decidedtolisten once more to Gérard. | think, nobodyattending his sessions regretted this. | had nottaken his stay at he hospital too seriously and was glad to meet him again at Lancaster. There heindicated that this was probably his last APL conference. This utterance struck me andI refused to believeit. Unfortunately, as you all know, he wasright.

I regret very much that I never managedto get him to perform at a meeting of the APL Club of Germany (my mastering of the English languageis poor, but I think performance describes closely what we missed).

The APL community haslost a great, innovative promoter of APL and,at least as important, a human being who helped to makethelife in this community so enjoyable. Wewill never forget him.

Anthony Camacho Longconvinced that Gérard had holdofthetail of the dragon that might lead to the secret of the universe, | did mybest to get Vector to support his endeavours.(See the Editorial in Vector 11.2) While holdingthetail of the dragon, he managedto be entertaining, engaging, witty and thoughtful. He gave mea T-shirtthatdisplayed difference-scanforall the world to see.| still wearit, but less often than in 1994 (not becauseI am less convinced but for fear of wearingit out). | wish I had known him when I was younger and

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cleverer. | wish I spoke French well enough to appreciateall he wrote Sylvia andI havetried, in vain, to do him justice in translation).

HowardA.Peelle I remember, with delight, Gérard s delight in watching his wife learn APL during the boat conference after APL92in St. Petersburg.

Dick Holt Thanks for doinga tribute to Gérard Langlet. Below is my emailto c.La. 1 wroteit at a time when I was emotionally upset by his death. Uponreflection, I ve decided not to changeit.

The c.La. message below from Christian Scherer needs no translation.

The APL community deeply mournsthe death of Gérard Langlet. His witty, learned, and creative work will long be treasured by his colleagues. Speaking personally, I ll remember, and miss, him for the rest of mylife.

>Gérard Langlet est mort le 22 décembre. >Il sera enterré au cimetiére de Jouy-en-Josas le vendredi 27 décembre 4 >10h45 >Christian Scherer

Eric Lescasse Gérard wasa researcher, a real researcher. Once Gérard had discovered APL, his life changed: he quickly became an expert in APL and usedit eversince for his work, but also spent considerableefforts trying to communicate to others his passion for this language. And he did succeed, manyofhis fellow researchers at CEA having become APL users, following him. He had a rare and enormous work power,still finding the timeto read a reallot of books. He becameinterested in seeing how APLcould be appliedto a lot ofdifferent areas crystallography, physics, biology, mathematics, poetry, etc. and published countless scientific articles and research papers in particularin the French APL Association review Les Nouvelles d APL which he has been setting up himself for the last 2 years ofhis life. Through these articles he could expose importantscientific discoveries he had madein all these domains, thanks to his particular use of APL and deep comprehension of some APLprimitives and operators (not equal scan) on booleans, Many admire him for his researches and discoveries; all should havea real great respectfor the courage he has shownthroughout his illness, going on writing articles and publishing Les Nouvelles d APL until the very endof his life and with never a complaint.

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Michel Dumontier T havejust this evening to write a memory of Gérard Langlet andI shall try to be concise: ] have so many memories of him as we have knowneachotherfor a long time...

Gérard Langlet was better than a friend or a brother for me, our relations were different than with other people, because we had someaffinity and we understood eachother, which is not commonly the casefora friend, even fora brother. The chief thing that made a strong relationship between us was, {everybody has guessedit!) ... APL of course.

But thereis not only that: scientific understanding of biology, mathematics, languages, humanbehaviour, the wayto feel things, to makerelations between things, and we can add: our common understanding of things through APL, whichis very different (1 assert it strongly) and not comparable with the understanding of what call a classic [1] person whohasnotin mind the specialtools, the only tools of thought cabled in the neurons by a long practice of APL.

Gérard would not contradict me as he said sometimes: To practise APL you need to have your neuronsaligned (orienté in French)in a particular way ... Wedid not have the sameideas onall the domainsor matters but we naturally avoided speaking in these domains, so we remained goodfriends. {All personsare different even twinsorclones; in natureall entities are different even electrons or smaller particles: a single reason is that they cannot be in the sameplace at the sametimeand here also, Gérard would not contradict me becauseofhis belief in APL difference scan (#\).)

Thefirst time that ] met Gérard waseither at an APL AFNOR meetingin Paris or an APL AFCETconference. Even though I practised APLsince 1969,| cannothave met him before 1974as it was only at this time that he began to be interested in APL,after having been transfixed by meeting a screen ina corridor which was displaying APL characters. That puzzled him and he was curious to know whatit meant, because he had somenatural curiosity about languages.

Heconfided to me that he took six months to withdraw from his mindall the false things that they taught him in FORTRAN...to accept APL understanding. We have in common 11 APL congressessince 1985.| think that it was for him as for me, perhapsnotwith the same intensity, a kind ofbliss to meet APL friends, generally for two weeks because we remained for APL ISO standard meetings.

The week-end between APL congress and APL ISO meeting, he rented a car and wevisited together or with other APL friends some beautiful countryside aroundandalso various restaurants! I have kept many photos since 1985 and videorecords since 1988 of those precious moments.

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I shall give just one anecdote to showthenatureof our complicity and perhapsour behaviour (some would say French behaviour... | am not so sure!). During the week-end I spoke of above, in 1993, wevisited a beautiful area near the Niagarafalls where I rememberthere was a peachfestival. During a walkin thestreets of the village, we saw a prestigious hotel. [ had no difficulty in convincing Gérardto visit the hotel where there was,if I rememberit well, a sale by auction. In a great lounge, we saw a piano and naturally, we played oneafter the other someclassical pieces of music and nobody said anything to us, weleft as we came... we had also the loveof music in common...

Naturally, we have not only exchanged manyideas but also much software, especially APL software. We wrote also papers in the samejournals especially the French APL review: Les Nouvelles d APL where he wasthe chief editor.

His last issue was that of December 1996. His last APL conference with me wasthatof Lancaster. As he had difficulties in walking, I brought him, his wife, my wife and my daughter in mycar from his hometo the conference.I think that it was a good memory for him,asitis for us.

Healso said that nothing is purely haphazard, but rather what in English you call hazard (chance, coincidence), and hesaid forinstance that it was not haphazard that we meteachother.

Thave surely a special memory of Gérard that J have never had for any other person and I think, as many people do, that Gérard will be missed in APLcircles.

Youwill find at the following URL a biography of Gérard, two speechesat the cemetery, one from his boss Edgar Soulie, another from a common APLfriend Sylvain Baron, a condolences book, the articles of the French APL review and other useful hypertext references: http: //www. ensmp. fr/~scherer/langlet/

[1] I call also classic mathematics, the mathematics (of the 17th century) thatis only andstill now taught at school. The mathematics of a person who doesn t know APLand has consequently no tool of thought.

Curtis Jones Myfavourite memory of Professor Langlet wasat his symposium at the NY/SIGAPL'sToolof Thought in January 1993. He kept a large crowdof us packedinto a small meeting room interested and amused as he led volunteers throughseveral exercises on successive differences in binary vectors.I m still curious about how an edgeofa triangle of bits from not-equalscan can be a Fourier transform.It was the call for papers with somerelation to the parity scan that goaded meto write about inner-product scans for that Tool of Thought seminar. In my next paper I wanted to show my inner-product

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scan generation ofa Fibonacciseries and cast it in a form thal used Langlet s geniton.I looked at his paper in the APL94 proceedings[1] for a geniton, and found he had already demonstrated an inner-productscan to generate a Fibonacciseries! +.%\Gpe2 201 11 0

I'msorry that Gérard will not be able to write the book| think is needed to explain his work. It was good to see at APL96 in Lancaster that Michael Zaus is explaining and building on Langletianideas of parity logic.

[1} Gérard A. Langlet, The APL Theory of HumanVision", APL Quote Quad, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 105-121 (APL94, Sep. 1994)

Eugene McDonnell Gérard Langlet was an inspiring and inspired teacher of APL. I have met many people who wereintroduced to APL in oneof his classes. He was a theorist whose novel ideas have given us muchto think about. And he was diligent in attending the meetings of the APL standards group, where he was a steady contributorto the workof that group.

Curtis Jones points out that Gene was the recording secretary of the APL standards group.

Norman Thomson Gérard was entertaining, provocative, endlessly self-confident while at the sametime warmin his enthusiasmfor just about anything he put his handto. He was undoubtedly one ofthe greatest characters who turned up at almost all the APL conferences, and will be missed there by many.

Z

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