ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/France
For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.
- "The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten."
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France
Nicole Oresme
c. 1323 – 1382
French philosopher and mathematician best known for his many writings.
Known for being critical of the writings of Aristotle, an unusual philosophical position for his day.
Defined the power of a number to a non-integral exponent.
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François Viète
1540 – 1603
French mathematician (also known in Latin form as Franciscus Vieta) who pioneered the use of letters in algebraic equations.
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Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac
1581 – 1638
Also known as Claude (Gaspar) Bachet.
First to discuss the solution of indeterminate equations by means of continued fractions.
First member to hold Seat 13 of the Académie Française.
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Marin Mersenne
1588 – 1648
French theologian, philosopher, mathematician and music theorist.
Most famous for his work with Mersenne primes.
Claimed in 1644 that the only primes $p \le 257$ for which $2^p - 1$ is prime are $2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 67, 127$ and $257$. Considering the tools he had at his disposal, he was uncannily accurate.
The first to determine the speed of sound in air.
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Albert Girard
1595 – 1632
Professional French lutenist who also studied mathematics, working in the fields of algebra, trigonometry and arithmetic.
Gave an inductive formula for the Fibonacci numbers.
First stated in 1632 that every prime of the form $4 k + 1$ is the sum of two squares in only one way.
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René Descartes
1596 – 1650
Also known as Renatus Cartesius.
French mathematician and philosopher who is supposed to have invented the Cartesian coordinate system, and thence the field of analytic geometry.
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Pierre de Fermat
c. 1600 – 1665
French lawyer, also an amateur mathematician famous for lots of things. Especially:
- Fermat's Little Theorem
- Claimed to have found a proof for what became known as Fermat's Last Theorem, but it has since been doubted that this is in fact the case (he may have been mistaken).
Although he claimed to have found proofs of many theorems, few of these have survived.
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Antoine Gombaud
1607 – 1684
Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré was a French gambler, writer, philosopher and amateur mathematician best known for his work in probability theory.
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Blaise Pascal
1623 – 1662
French mathematician and philosopher who explored probability theory and projective geometry.
Most famous for the construction now commonly known as Pascal's Triangle.
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Giovanni Domenico Cassini
1625 – 1712
Italian/French mathematician, astronomer, engineer, and astrologer.
Most of his important discoveries were in the field of astronomy.
Also known as Giandomenico Cassini or Jean-Dominique Cassini.
Not to be confused with his son, also called Jean-Dominique Cassini.
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Michel Rolle
1652 – 1719
French mathematician best known for Rolle's Theorem.
Also noted for popularising the $n$th root sign.
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Guillaume de l'Hôpital
1661 – 1704
Shortened version of his full name and title: Guillaume-François-Antoine Marquis de l'Hôpital, Marquis de Sainte-Mesme, Comte d'Entremont and Seigneur d'Ouques-la-Chaise.
French mathematician best known for L'Hôpital's Rule, although this was in fact discovered by Johann Bernoulli.
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Abraham de Moivre
1667 – 1754
French mathematician best known for De Moivre's Formula.
Also noted for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory.
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Pierre Raymond de Montmort
1678 – 1719
French mathematician (also known as Pierre Rémond de Montmort) who worked in probability theory.
The first to introduce the combinatorial study of derangements.
Also known for naming Pascal's triangle after Blaise Pascal, calling it "Table de M. Pascal pour les combinaisons."
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Pierre Bouguer
1698 – 1758
French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist and astronomer.
The first known discoverer of what is now generally known as the Beer-Lambert Law.
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Alexis Claude Clairaut
1713 – 1765
Sometimes reported as de Clairault.
French mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist. Worked out the shape of the Earth.
Best known in mathematics for Clairaut's (differential) equation.
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Jean le Rond d'Alembert
1717 – 1783
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, physicist and philosopher best known for his contribution to the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra - he produced a flawed proof which was later patched up by Gauss.
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Jean-Étienne Montucla
1725 – 1799
ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Jean-Étienne Montucla
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Étienne Bézout
1730 – 1783
French mathematician best known for his work in number theory and algebra.
He was also the author of widely-used textbooks.
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Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande
1732 – 1807
ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande
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Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde
1735 – 1796
French mathematician and musician mainly active in the fields of combinatorics.
Referred to by some as "the founder of the theory of determinants".
Best known nowadays for the Vandermonde Determinant and the Chu-Vandermonde Identity.
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Joseph Louis Lagrange
1736 – 1813
Born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia.
He did the following:
- Author of Réflexions sur la résolution algébrique des equations (1770), a complete restudy of all the known methods of solving the cubic and quartic equations.
- Proposed a prime number as the universally adopted number base. Thus every systematic fraction would be reducible and represent the number in a unique way.
- Established some very general theorems on whether a number is prime from examining its digits.
- Tried in vain to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
- One of the few exceptions of his time who was doubtful that a polynomial equation of degree greater than four was capable of a formal solution by means of radicals.
- Gave an insufficient proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.
He also proved Wilson's Theorem.
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Gaspard Monge
1746 – 1818
French mathematician who invented the field of descriptive geometry.
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Pierre-Simon de Laplace
1749 – 1827
French mathematician and astronomer whose work greatly influenced the development of the mathematics governing astronomy.
Pioneered the field of mathematical physics.
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Adrien-Marie Legendre
1752 – 1833
- French mathematician, focusing in the fields of statistics, abstract algebra, number theory and analysis.
- Has a moon crater named after him.
- Gave an early proof of Fermat's Last Theorem for $n=5$.
- Attempted a proof of the Law of Quadratic Reciprocity in 1785, but it was flawed. It was eventually proven by Gauss in 1798.
Christian Kramp
1760 – 1826
French mathematician working mainly with factorials.
His main claim to fame is for being the one to introduce the Factorial sign: $!$
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Joseph Fourier
1768 – 1830
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist best known for the Fourier series and his application of this technique to the problem of heat conduction.
Also developed the technique of dimensional analysis, and discovered the greenhouse effect.
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François Joseph Servois
1768 – 1847
French mathematician and military officer.
Worked in the fields of projective geometry, functional analysis and complex analysis.
First introduced (in 1814) the concept of commutativity which till then had generally been taken for granted in all fields of mathematics.
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Napoleon Bonaparte
1769 – 1821
Amateur French mathematician also famous as a military and political leader of France (in the same way that Henry Tudor was an amateur singer/songwriter whose hits included Greensleeves).
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Sophie Germain
1776 – 1831
Marie-Sophie Germain was a French mathematician who contributed to differential geometry and number theory, and provided some insights into aspects of Fermat's Last Theorem.
She was completely self-taught (as women were not encouraged to do that sort of thing in those days) and contributed her early work under the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc.
Had Gauss and Lagrange as mentors, but apart from that, suffered throughout her career from prejudice against her gender.
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Siméon-Denis Poisson
1781 – 1840
French mathematician and physicist best known for his work in probability theory and differential equations.
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Jacques Philippe Marie Binet
1786 – 1856
French mathematician best known for his contribution to the Binet-Cauchy Identity.
Recognized as the first to define the rules for matrix multiplication.
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Jean-Victor Poncelet
1788 – 1867
French mathematician and engineer who revived the field of projective geometry.
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Augustin Louis Cauchy
1789 – 1857
- French Engineer and mathematician, from a suburb of Paris, which at the time was home to many leading mathematicians.
- Wrote seven books and more than 700 papers in various fields of mathematics.
- Made contributions in theory of determinants, eigenvalues, ordinary and partial differential equations, permutation groups, and the foundation of calculus.
- Famous for founding the theory of functions of a complex variable.
- Argued by some as the founder of group theory.
Gabriel Lamé
1795 – 1870
Full name: Père de Gabriel Léon Jean Baptiste Lamé. (Sometimes misrepresented as "Gabrielle Lamé", but that is a mistake.)
French mathematician who investigated curvilinear coordinate systems.
Studied the series of curves now known as Lamé curves.
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Irénée-Jules Bienaymé
1796 – 1878
French mathematician mainly working in statistics, whose work can be considered as extending the work of Laplace.
His first name often appears as Irenée.
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Joseph Liouville
1809 – 1882
Active in the fields of number theory, complex analysis, differential geometry, topology, mathematical physics and astronomy.
Proved the existence of transcendental numbers.
Contributed the Sturm-Liouville theory to the field of mathematical physics, in collaboration with Charles Sturm.
Pioneered the study of fractional calculus.
There are several theorems named after him, all in different areas of mathematics and physics.
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Évariste Galois
1811 – 1832
French mathematician famous for dying at the age of 20 as the result of a duel.
Despite his total collected works amounting to a mere 60 pages or so, he had a significant influence in the development of the field of group theory. He was in fact the first person to use the word group in a technical sense.
His innovative approach to the problem of the insolubility of the quintic led to the field known now as Galois theory.
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Pierre Alphonse Laurent
1813 – 1854
French mathematician and first-rate military and civil engineer best known for his discovery of what is now known as a Laurent series.
Also published works on the theory of light polarization.
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Joseph Louis François Bertrand
1822 – 1900
French mathematician working in the fields of number theory, differential geometry, probability theory, economics and thermodynamics.
He conjectured Bertrand's Postulate, in 1845, that there is at least one prime between $n$ and $2n - 2$ for every $n > 3$. This was proved in 1850 by Chebyshev, and hence it is also known as the Bertrand-Chebyshev Theorem.
Also wrote plenty on the history of mathematics.
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Charles Hermite
1822 – 1901
French mathematician who did research mainly in the fields of number theory and analysis.
The first to prove that e is transcendental.
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Eugène Rouché
1832 – 1910
French mathematician best known for his work in complex analysis and calculus.
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Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan
1838 – 1922
Camille Jordan was a French mathematician who founded much of the field of group theory.
Also wrote the influential textbook Cours d'Analyse.
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Émile Lemoine
1840 – 1912
Emile Michel Hyacinthe Lemoine was a French mathematician and civil engineer who worked mainly in geometry.
He is best known for defining the Lemoine point of a triangle.
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Édouard Lucas
1842 – 1891
Full name: François Édouard Anatole Lucas.
French mathematician best known for his study of the Fibonacci numbers. As a result of his researches, discovered what are now known as the Lucas numbers.
In 1876, proved that the Mersenne number $M_{127}$ is prime, and discovered that $M_{67}$ is actually composite.
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Paul Tannery
1843 – 1904
French mathematician and historian best known for his work on the history of Greek mathematics.
Edited the works of Diophantus, Fermat and Descartes.
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Gaston Floquet
1847 – 1920
Achille Marie Gaston Floquet was a French mathematician best known for his work in analysis, especially in theory of differential equations.
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Henri Poincaré
1854 – 1912
Full name: Jules Henri Poincaré.
French mathematician and philosopher.
Often referred to as "The last universalist", as he was the last one able to master the whole of mathematics at the time. (Since then the field has grown too large.)
Introduced the field of special relativity.
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Charles Émile Picard
1856 – 1941
French mathematician who made significant advances in the fields of:
Son-in-law of Charles Hermite.
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Jacques Salomon Hadamard
1865 – 1963
French mathematician who contributed in the fields of:
Most famous for proving the Prime Number Theorem in 1896, independently of Charles de la Vallée Poussin.
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Charles de la Vallée Poussin
1866 – 1962
Full name: Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, Baron de la Vallée Poussin.
Belgian mathematician famous for proving the Prime Number Theorem, independently of Jacques Hadamard in 1896.
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Émile Borel
1871 – 1956
Full name: Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel.
French mathematician working mainly in measure theory and its applications to probability theory.
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René-Louis Baire
1874 – 1932
French mathematician who worked mainly on the theory of continuity and irrational numbers.
Most famous for the Baire Category Theorem.
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Henri Léon Lebesgue
1875 – 1941
French mathematician famous mainly for his work on the theory of integral calculus.
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Maurice René Fréchet
1878 – 1973
French mathematician who made considerable advances in topology, and pioneered the concept of metric spaces.
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Pierre Samuel
1921 – 2009
French mathematician working mainly in the fields of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry.
A second-generation member of the Bourbaki group.
Best known (and greatly appreciated) for the books he wrote.
Politically active in the spheres of social justice and environmentalism.
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Benoît B. Mandelbrot
1924 – 2010
French-American mathematician of Polish origin famous for his work on fractals.
The Mandelbrot set is named for him.
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Henri J. Nussbaumer
b. 1931
French mathematician and engineer who has written a few works on the fast fourier transform.
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Nicolas Bourbaki
established 1935
Nicolas Bourbaki is the name given to a group of (mainly) French mathematicians whose aim was to present an account of the entirety of modern mathematics, with an emphasis on rigour and generality.
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Occitania
Joan Francés Fulcònis
c. 1520 – ?
Joan Francés Fulcònis (also rendered Johan Frances Fulconis) was a mathematician from the area of southern France referred to informally nowadays as Occitania.
Notable for writing one of the earliest mathematics books printed in one of the Occitan dialects, a linguistic group which at the time was subject to political pressure.
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References
- ↑ Eric Temple Bell, Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London.
