Abstract. One of the great achievements performed by Jacques Friedel in France has been to promote experimental activities on the electronic properties in condensed matter physics, which has led him, among others, to be an active promoter of the up-rise of the "Laboratoire de Physique des Solides" (LPS). I have had the chance to be involved in this process in the early days and to create a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) group which remains active nowadays. Among various other scientific activities, I have performed some work on Kondo effect in the 1970's which has allowed me to enlighten the real interest of the NMR probe as a local experimental technique to visualize the perturbation brought by impurities in normal metals. These experiments were of course driven by my strong exposure to J. Friedel's education on charge and spin density oscillations in metals. This work has been also my first personal contact with correlated electron physics, a field in which I have been involved for years particularly since the discovery of high T c cuprates (HTSC). I recall that the early NMR experiments done in these systems have given evidence for the existence of strong electronic correlations and established the occurrence of the "pseudogap", on which I have initially had some exchanges with J. Friedel. The pseudogap, occurring below a temperature T*, has during the last twenty years raised endless discussions about the incidence of correlations on superconductivity. Many researchers are still advocating today that the pseudogap is due to the existence of preformed pairs above T c . I shall show that its robustness to impurities and disorder that we evidenced from the early days rather suggested that it results from a competing order of the correlated state. This is apparently better accepted nowadays, although various distinct ordered states detected below T* are not yet understood. The short reviews of the work done on Kondo effect and on the cuprates in Orsay allow me to enlighten the importance of the initial choices done by J. Friedel for the LPS. I also underline the large contrast between the scientific behaviours which prevailed between these two periods of scientific activity. This is not only ascribed to the discovery of the HTSC but also to the changes in publication policies and to the modification of evaluation procedures, all this being driven by the advent of information technologies. I suggest that these changes might have a negative incidence, in my opinion, on the research and education system, at least in our field of science.