As the saying goes, there are years with and years without. The 2020 that has just passed will, without a doubt, count in the years not yet seen. To end this time in parentheses, and for the first time since its inception, the Fermat Science Society will hold its General Assembly by videoconference on Saturday January 30 at 10 am. There is nothing very unusual, given the health conditions, the list is long of what should have been given up willingly or unintentionally between a period of confinement, a time of disintegration where hope is reborn in regaining a little freedom of action. Before the new period of imprisonment.

I look for a new dynamic to preserve the existing. Faced with reduced activity and unavoidable restrictions, the staff and the office did their best, in painful conditions, to ensure the life of the association from day to day, to create counterfires, and in particular to maintain the association with schools, phone calls, mail and material loans.

But this does not mean that the future has been forgotten. The creation of an immersive scenography for the futuristic Fermat House has enabled the improvement of this Math House project, which will open its doors in the second half of 2022. Progress has been made in the exhibition “Artificial Intelligence” via video conference. The European Erasmus + projects continued, despite the impossibility of actual meetings between participants from other countries, and led to exchanges with young people from Beaumont thanks to the innovative materials they were able to test.

It is the report of this extraordinary year’s activity that the participants in the General Assembly will discover. Despite all these doubts, the Fermat Science team and volunteers sought solutions as problems emerged.

As such, we can talk about a Happy New Year 2020, which will in no way prevent us from wanting 2021 not to look like it.