Alexander. The New Star of the Bogdanov Ancient Royal Bloodline - An Interview With The Igor Bogdanoff

On vacation in Port Grimaud where they are received by their friends Marie-Caroline and Luc Ferry, Igor and Amélie pouponnent on the quays. On vacation in Port Grimaud where they are received by their friends Marie-Caroline and Luc Ferry, Igor and Amélie pouponnent on the quays.

Baptiste Giroudon

Igor and Amélie de Bourbon-Parme have not touched earth since the arrival of their little boy.

This will not surprise anyone: in the Bogdanov, one travels in time. Not towards the future, as in the television shows of Igor and Grishka, but towards the past. Nestled in the heart of Paris, the little house of Igor and Amélie resembles a medieval residence. Behind a heavy wooden door is a dark corridor. In the middle of the drawing-room, dressed in two large tapestries of the 16th century, stands an imposing Gothic fireplace struck with the arms of France. For nine months, a new strangeness has come to perfect the setting of the "castle": an immense fresco that represents one of the most famous popes of the Renaissance, the look immersed in that of a mysterious young woman ... Two ancestors of Amelie and Little Alexander.

Paris Match. Amelia, who are the man and the woman who seem to promise eternal love on this fresco?
Amelie of Bourbon-Parme. He's my back, back ... great-grandfather. A Renaissance pope! And the young woman he looks at is none other than my distant ancestor.

In short, Igor, even on the walls of your house, you always manage to look for the origins ...
Igor Bogdanov. The mystery of time fascinates me. It is as exciting to go back to the origin of a family as to that of the Universe.

Your new book, "The Thought of God", is an amazing success. How can one write a bestseller with the Higgs boson?

IB
Since our show "Time X", science is my passion, like that of my brother, Grichka. We want to share it with as many people as possible. Science is not something abstract. It is above all the history of men who live it. In "The Thought of God," we recount the astonishing adventure of Ramanujan, that genius of numbers who, without ever learning mathematics, was able to solve head-on equations with breathtaking. Another example: if I tell you that the nuclei of hydrogen atoms present in your glass of water were all created in the first minute of the big bang, it will shock you. More surprisingly, Do you know that no daisy has 6, 9 or 12 petals. Why ? Because the number of petals of flowers obeys a relentless mathematical law. By what "miracle"? These are the questions we address in our books.

The word "God" comes back in the title of your last two books. Does the history of the Universe tell us something about its existence?

IB
The moment of creation that physicists call the moment of the big bang is the bearer of an extraordinary order. Nothing is left to chance. The Universe is then much smaller than a grain of dust. But it contains a colossal energy. In sixty seconds, it generates almost all the material present today. How is it possible ? We believe that the origin of the mystery lies in the mathematical laws that precede the Universe.

Why, instead of welcoming your successes in bookstores, does the scientific community fall on you?

IB
The image of the "twins of Time X" in their famous silver combinations did not stick at all with that of "serious" researchers. When one has undertaken to support a thesis on one of the most pointed and taboo subjects of science, the origin of the Universe, it has cringed.

Mouths coming out of the ordinary, this would justify a witch trial ...

IB
As Einstein said, in which the scientific community criticized his hair too long, "Instead of attacking me on my physical attack me on LA physics. "

But how to do it ? Nobody understands your thesis!

IB
It's not that complicated. We simply say that before the big bang, matter did not exist. Instead, there was a sort of mathematical "code" that structured the birth and evolution of the Universe. Somewhat like the genetic code structures the birth and evolution of living beings.

Are there any scientists who defend your work?

IB
Yes, for example the physicist Lubos Motl, young prodigy of Harvard who wrote in 2007 a book about our ideas about the front big bang. More recently, Luis Gonzalez-Mestres, CNRS physicist, in his postface to "The Thought of God", concluded that we may have been the first to predict the existence of the mysterious dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe.

This thesis has nevertheless created you a lot of trouble. Do you not regret having supported it?

IB
Never in life! Right from the start, we knew we were going to put the scientific community at risk. Thanks to this research, we have proposed a new theory on the origin of the Universe. Today we must defend it. That's why we're fighting.

Amelie, do you read Igor's books?

A. of B.-P.
Yes, everyone. I love them because they passionately relate human adventures.

And his thesis?

A. of B.-P.
I admit I did not even try! Even though I am very sensitive to the beauty of these mathematical symbols that I will never understand.

What did you like about him?

A. of B.-P.
It was in 1997. Daniel Cohen, the famous geneticist, had organized a summer evening in his garden. Igor was chatting under a tree with him. And I was immediately more attracted by the mysteries of the Universe than by those of molecular biology. In a few sentences, Igor managed to take me to the stars.

Does he have as much imagination in his gifts as in his books?

A. of B.-P.
On my return from maternity, I found this fresco. So I must have resembled those cartoon characters whose lower jaw drops off before falling to the ground.

Surprise for Amélie on her return from the clinic: on the wall of the salon, a fresco depicting a pope, her ancestor ... Alexander

Where did the idea come from, Igor?

IB Last year we spent a few days at the Farnese Palace, the French embassy in Rome. It is a palace built under the Renaissance by one of the Italian ancestors of Amelia, Alessandro Farnese, who became Pope under the name of Paul III!

How can one go down from a pope?

A. of B.-P.
It was another era. You can understand it by watching the series "Borgia". Innocent VIII, the two Medici - Leo X, Clement VII - and many other Popes of the Renaissance had children. It is not as if Benedict XVI had a hidden son ...

Who is the lady we see right on the fresco?

A. of B.-P.
It was Silvia Ruffini, the Roman aristocrat who gave her four children, all illegitimate, but treated like princes.

The story of your family is as complicated as Igor's thesis ... Does not it inspire you with a new novel?

A. of B.-P.

So, I started a novel about Paul III. I'm about halfway there. But as I now have a baby and an absorbing job, I'm a little late.

Your son bears the same name as your ancestor Alexander Farnese, is it a coincidence?

IB
We were especially looking for a Slavonic-sounding name to go with Bogdanov.

It is true that Alexander descended from a pope, the greatest kings of France, but also from a prince Bogdanov and a black American lyric singer, the tenor Roland Hayes ...

IB
You forget my grandmother , The Countess of Colloredo-Mansfeld, who lived at the court of the Emperor Francis Joseph. An unusual character who has lulled our childhood. It was in her home that Grichka and I were born in her 11th century castle in Gascony.

Which of you is the elder?

IB
It's me. Grichka was born forty minutes later. The field doctor had not even seen him! Grichka was such a surprise that he was disguised as a shoe box!

Who of you was the first to be passionate about the stars?

IB
It happened at the same time. We were not yet 4 years old and our grandmother woke us up in the middle of the night on June 21 to show us the sunrise on the hill overlooking our village in the Gers. On the way she showed us the stars, the constellations whose names she knew. That fascinated us. When we arrived on the hill, the sun emerged from the horizon. She said, "It's a star like any other, but it's closer." This walk was the starting point of our passion for the mysteries of the Universe.

Igor, you fly helicopters, you climb and retype old houses. Looks like you're the one who has his feet on the ground, when Grishka has his head in the stars.

IB
It's no coincidence that Grichka passed a mathematics and physics thesis. I have always been more "concrete". As a child, while I was making shacks in the trees, my brother read poems or amused himself by playing mathematical games. Today, while I go to climb Fontainebleau, Grichka repeats Elizabethan tunes with an old guitar. His favorite is "Flow My Tears", by John Dowland. The tube of the year 1596!

Amélie, have you ever confused Igor and Grichka?

A. of B.-P.
Never. In their last book, I even amused myself by guessing who wrote what. Without making a mistake once.

OG translates from here: http://www.parismatch.com/People/Spectacles/Alexandre-La-nouvelle-etoile-des-Bogdanov-160475