Xi'an's Og

The astronomer and cosmologist Karim Benabed got killed on Wednesday in Paris. While cycling, run over by a truck-driver (with no further details at the moment). He was a senior research at IAP (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris) and we actively collaborated together between 2005 and 2010 on an ANR project on efficient simulation methods for inferring cosmological parameters, based on PMC. And Bayesian model comparison. He was a very congenial person, very sharp in assimilating new methods and keen on exploring novel hypotheses. While we did not keep closely in touch, I would meet him now and then while visiting the IAP. Ironically, Darren Wraith, formerly a postdoc with him at IAP,  was visiting me last week and we were reminiscing of that era as late as Saturday night over dinner… So sad (and also so absurd, a truck stopping the trajectory of someone managing to travel to the origins of the Universe). The above is a cartoon of him drawn during his cosmic microwave background presentation during the Nuit de l’Astronomie.

This entry was posted on December 5, 2025 at 12:25 am and is filed under Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABC, adaptive importance sampling, ANR, astronomy, Bayesian inference, Bayesian model comparison, CMB, cosmology, cycling, dark energy, evidence, gravitational lensing, IAP, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Nuit de l'Astronomie, Planck experiment, PMC, population Monte Carlo, traffic accident. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.