Bernard in Vietnam 2016
These few words will certainly not ease your pain, just as they did nothing to soften my own. But I hope they will help ensure that the memory of this great man endures through the kindness of his actions and the depth of his love.
Meeting Bernard Pottier was a gift for me—a chance to come close to a scientist who, despite all the constraints of the system he had to navigate, managed to keep his convictions, his faith in humanity, and his commitment to clarity and fairness in his explanations. Bernard restored my hope in the academic ecosystem and the beauty of knowledge. Like a true mentor, from our very first meetings, he described to me, in just the right words, the field of possibilities for a geophysicist like myself in the information sciences.
Speaking with Bernard felt like returning to the source, to the very foundation of thought. Never a word out of place, always striving to dispel the darkness of this world. Asking a question of Bernard was like asking a question of a wise cat, who, after a thoughtful twitch of his whiskers, would pounce on the answer with boundless generosity.