Deaths - Tribute to Pierre MATHOULIN

We have already informed you of the sad news of Pierre Mathoulin's (ENSAE 1985) death on August 15. Today, we would like to share with you the moving tribute paid to him by his friend Philippe Mouttou at a recent ceremony held in his memory. The text of this very personal speech gives a good idea of the kind of person Pierre Mathoulin was, but it also illustrates a career of duty and commitment, notably to ENSAE Alumni and the Association des Actuaires, of which Pierre was long-time Treasurer. At the same time, we invite you to consult variances. eu's coverage of an interview with Pierre on his profession as an actuary, whose messages are still largely relevant today.

Tribute to Pierre Mathoulin (1962-2021)

By Philippe Mouttou

Pierre passed away on the night of August 14-15, 2021, aged 59.

In our lives as women and men, we meet many people, many of whom will be our relations, buddies, comrades, friends, loved ones; and then there are those, who, for me, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, perhaps two, there are those to whom we choose to give the substantive title of faithful friends. This warm, humble, wise and merciful friendship simply makes those who practice it happy. Simply happy to share and proud to know each other in harmony.

My path crossed Pierre's 39 years ago, when we were both 20, one day in September 1982, and we entered ENSAE together. We graduated the same year, 1985. For three years, we got to know each other and rub shoulders, but I have to confess that if someone had told me on that September day in 1982 that Pierre would be one of my closest friends for the next 39 years - I would, without a doubt, have said "Never".

Because everything separated us, he was at that time as prolix as I was. He was at ease everywhere and with everyone, went to restaurants, museums and the cinema, had an enormous general culture, was a well of science and knowledge, exuded intelligence and was an excellent student.rale culture, was a wellspring of science and knowledge, exuded intelligence and was an excellent student, you know, a head of his class. He voted for Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, I voted for François Mitterrand. I ate at MacDonald's - Pierre never set foot in a fast-food restaurant with me, and many years later, I'm not really sure he ever did - I did a lot of sport, Pierre wasn't particularly athletic, and he was a great sportsman.He was an outstanding skier, exceptional in class and talent; he could ski every slope and never fell, and I'd never skied before. I played baby, pinball, I was a cafeteria attendant, Pierre was none of those things.

I wonder what brought us together, or who brought us together. I don't know what.

Pierre was born on April 4, 1962, and spent his entire childhood in Manosque. He was a child curious about everything, and loved to tell me all about Manosque and Barcelonnette, his closeness to his grandparents, his travels with his parents, his squabbles with his little sister. He left Manosque to do his preparatory classes at the Lycée Thiers in Marseille, after passing his baccalauréat C with flying colors, which impressed all his teachers; Simone, his little sister, told me it wasn't easy to succeed him in that schooling. He always told me that those years of preparatory school had left a deep, harsh mark on him: loneliness, distance from his loved ones, a change of life, competition, few real relationships.

At the end of his competitive entrance exams, he passed the ENSAE, and chose ENSAE.

His erudition had helped in the choice of this school, a little iconoclastic at the time in the landscape of the French Grandes Ecoles Scientifiques.Imagine a 4-hour French oral, three hours of preparation and one hour of oral... on a par with a Maths test, that really stood out.

Pierre was like a fish in water at ENSAE, and above all he met Jean Luc Lipatz, a polytechnicien and administrator at INSEE, a young computer science tutor with a passion for microcomputing and the Apple world. Pierre and Jean Luc shaped and created the ENSAE computer club, where they built and played a lot... from Wizardry to Load Runner and so on...It was also at ENSAE that Pierre met Michel Piermay, his workgroup leader in ^3rd year, with whom he would later found Fixage. For three years, as throughout his life, Pierre was involved in many associations, from the Institute of Actuaries, to various actuarial associations, to philatelic associations, to the Alumni Association.to the ENSAE alumni association to the presidency of the association of musicians in Lozère, created by a musician friend of his.

Pierre built, Pierre was a builder. Not a flamboyant builder, one of those who shine, no, Pierre was one of those builders in the shadows, those who simply get things done, through whom everything happens and who are not in the limelight. He was an architect, those who build and imagine, even more than those who know how to draw up plans. In his three years at ENSAE, he built the BDE, the Junior Entreprise and the Micro-informatique club. He was an active builder, and almost never on the front line.

We were classmates at the time, we had very few activities in common, our common interest in computers brought us closer together, but it almost separated us forever... We competed for the presidency of the school's microcomputer club, with both technical and organizational points of view totally diverging.We competed for the presidency of the school's microcomputer club, with totally divergent technical and organizational viewpoints.I was D.O.S., he was Mac, I lost by two votes (there were eight voters), and at the time I felt a great deal of sadness and injustice, not to say anger, because his last-minute candidacy seemed like a real betrayal. We discussed it many years later, 21 years later, one evening in 2005 at his home, when he told me, with his personal irony and caustic humor, that like many socialists, I had believed from an early age that you could win elections without campaigning, based solely on your own image and convictions...

I should have thanked Pierre for this defeat, as it freed me from many commitments and constraints. And that's another of the great qualities of the Pierre I knew: no commitment was a constraint for him, it was an opportunity to do his duty, to put himself at the service of others, to bring them a certain happiness, and that was Pierre's main concern.

I don't think I spoke to Pierre for weeks. We found each other through mutual friends, gradually, and above all by leaving school, as we both did our military service a year after leaving school, 86/08. So we found ourselves working while our classmates went off to do their military service. This brought us closer together.

Pierre was also an actuary. He was one of the first students at the school to initiate, under the guidance of Michel Piermay, Pierre Simonet and Patrick Artus, the ENSAE graduate actuarial stream.rule of Michel Piermay, Pierre Simonet and Patrick Artus, the ENSAE actuarial graduate program. He chose the world of finance and actuarial science, and was a great servant of it wherever he went - from Cardif to La Mondiale, to Fixage of which he was a founder, all have recognized and acknowledged his immense professionalism. He was also one of the first to see the effectiveness of advanced programming tools in deciphering and organizing data, to build effective decision-making tools.

Paradoxically, it was his choices, far removed from mine, that brought us together. He had also established the tradition of New Year's Eve, accompanied by his truffle omelette. Because Pierre was also a man of tradition and a fine gourmet, he loved his times of sharing. His passion for classical music, which took him for years to the Salzburg Festival, was part of his time for sharing and tradition. For many years too, from 1985 to 2003, we often spent New Year's Eve together, as was our tradition.

Pierre was a man of Duty, Commitment and Tradition.

Pierre had two other qualities that cemented our friendship: he was loyal and fair. I knew his loyalty throughout our life together. Pierre never forgot me, he was always checking up on me, he was always trying to find out but never trying to understand, and above all he never judged. He was simply faithful. He knew how to be supportive, but he also knew how to say the words that only a faithful friend can say, without getting angry. Above all, Pierre put the sincerity of his heart in the balance. Pierre has lived through moments that made him falter; the death of his father was one of them, and I saw him change profoundly. More recent events have rocked him in the same way. But his deep desire to speak from the heart and his faithfulness have always been there.

Pierre was a just man. We could give many examples, and I'll leave it to each of you who knew him to find the one that dedicates you to him as you read these few words. I'll give you mine. A divorce is a difficult time for everyone, it creates distance between two people in this world, it is in our modern worlds, a source of sadness in families, and it is not uncommon to see friends, loved ones lose themselves in an imbalance that is not their own. Pierre had an opinion about my divorce, but Pierre never spoke to me about it, ever. Pierre is the only one of my close friends who has maintained relations with my ex-wife and myself on an equal, fair basis. He chose harmony and exercised profound arbitration of opposites. He was a just man, not the kind of justice that rules the world, but the kind that makes the just in this world.

Finally, Pierre loved those closest to him most of all. Pierre was very close to his grandparents, his parents, his sister, his brother-in-law, Pierre, a confirmed bachelor, had no children, but a nephew and goddaughters, all of whom were part of his commitment and above all of his love.His family, his roots, those closest to him, were the bedrock that made him who he was.

I could talk for hours about the many shared memories I have with Pierre, of memorable raclette evenings, his epic moves, his first big TV, his computers, our passion for cars and so much more.and many other things, including the 2007 England-South Africa Rugby World Cup final, which his incredible generosity enabled us to experience together at the Stade de France, because Pierre was also profoundly generous.

Pierre was a man of commitment, duty, loyalty, tradition and love. Pierre was what we all seek to be, a woman or a man, simply, justly, humbly and mercifully, symbolically a Knight, a Prince if not a King.

At the beginning of these few words, I wondered what brought us together; I know now that it was you, Pierre, who brought us together, simply because of who you were, and without a doubt, who you were for all of us who knew you.You were certainly a beautiful light, not a blazing light that dazzles, but a sincere, brilliant and profoundly charismatic light, that of the hope that guides people through the darkness.

You were Pierre, and on this stone all of us who have known you have built a little. It's at the crossroads, between the horizontal and the vertical, between the how and the why, that the Red Rose was born, symbolizing the love of men, the love between men.The essential is invisible to the eye" said Saint Exupéry, in The Little Prince; Pierre, we miss you every day.

Philippe Mouttou.