Olivier Pironneau joined Ecole Polytechnique Paris in 1966, obtained a Master in Mathematical Economy in 1969 and a PhD from the University of California Berkeley in Optimization and Control in 1971 with E. Polak. He learned Fluid Mechanics at Cambridge UK during a PostDoc with Sir James Lighthill and finally wrote a  These d'Etat in Jacques-Louis Lions' team at INRIA on Shape Optimization. After 5 years at INRIA and many industrial collaborations (including with Dassault-Aviation) he joined the University of Paris as Professor in applied mathematics and computer science. He wrote 5 books and more than 300 research articles. His current interests are in  computational methods for Financial Engineering and computational mechanics. He has been scientific advisor to INRIA, CNES, the University of Paris VI, the Commission on Nuclear Waste, the Finnish Center for Supercomputing CSC and the Commission for supercomputing in France. Olivier Pironneau is now emeritus professor at Paris-Sorbonne university and Foreign Secretary of the French Académie des sciences.