I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable

Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.

I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist's life in France.

The extraordinary fact is that the first idea I had which motivated me, that worked, is conjecture, a mathematical idea which may or may not be true. And that idea is still unproven. It is the foundation, what started me and what everybody failed to **** prove has so far defeated the greatest efforts by experts to be proven.

If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).

In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.

The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people.