Thibault Damour is a theoretical physicist who has made significant advances in gravitational physics . He introduced a new way of viewing black holes , a new method for describing the coalescence of binary black holes and he uncovered a hidden mathematical structure in cosmological singularities. His work played a key role in the observations of binary pulsars and in the detection of gravitational waves. He is professor of theoretical physics at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (Bures-sur-Yvette). He received: the Balzan prize, the Einstein medal, the Galileo Galilei medal, the Dirac medal, the Gold medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.