Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré (UK: /ˈpwæ̃kɑːreɪ/, US: /ˌpwæ̃kɑːˈreɪ/; French: [ɑ̃ʁi pwɛ̃kaʁe] ;[1][2][3] 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist",[4] since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. Due to his scientific success, influence and his discoveries, he has been deemed "the philosopher par excellence of modern science."[5]
For ships with this name, see French ship Henri Poincaré.
Henri Poincaré
29 April 1854
17 July 1912 (aged 58)
French
Jules Henri Poincaré
- Lycée Nancy (now Lycée Henri-Poincaré)
- École Polytechnique
- École des Mines
- University of Paris (Dr, 1879)
- Poincaré conjecture
- Poincaré–Bendixson theorem
- Poincaré–Lindstedt method
- Poincaré recurrence theorem
- Poincaré–Bjerknes circulation theorem
- Poincaré group
- Poincaré gauge
- Poincaré–Hopf theorem
- Poincaré duality
- Poincaré–Birkhoff–Witt theorem
- Poincaré inequality
- Hilbert–Poincaré series
- Poincaré series
- Poincaré metric
- Automorphic form
- Coining the term "Betti number"
- Brouwer fixed-point theorem
- Bifurcation theory
- Chaos theory
- Dynamical system theory
- Dark matter
- French historical epistemology
- Fundamental group
- Gravitational wave
- Hairy ball theorem
- Homological algebra
- Limit cycle
- Phase space
- Preintuitionism/conventionalism
- Predicativism
- Qualitative theory of differential equations
- Special relativity
- Quantum mechanics
- Sphere-world
- Rotation number
- Uniformization theorem
- Three-body problem
- Topology
- RAS Gold Medal (1900)
- Sylvester Medal (1901)
- Matteucci Medal (1905)
- Bolyai Prize (1905)
- Bruce Medal (1911)
- Mathematics
- physics
As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics.[6] In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology.
Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Hendrik Lorentz in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. In 1905, Poincaré first proposed gravitational waves (ondes gravifiques) emanating from a body and propagating at the speed of light as being required by the Lorentz transformations.[7] In 1912, he wrote an influential paper which provided a mathematical argument for quantum mechanics.[8][9]
The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named after him.
Early in the 20th century he formulated the Poincaré conjecture, which became, over time, one of the famous unsolved problems in mathematics. It was solved in 2002–2003 by Grigori Perelman.
Work[edit]
Summary[edit]
Poincaré made many contributions to different fields of pure and applied mathematics such as: celestial mechanics, fluid mechanics, optics, electricity, telegraphy, capillarity, elasticity, thermodynamics, potential theory, quantum theory, theory of relativity and physical cosmology.
He was also a populariser of mathematics and physics and wrote several books for the lay public.
Among the specific topics he contributed to are the following:
Awards
Named after him
Henri Poincaré did not receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, but he had influential advocates like Henri Becquerel or committee member Gösta Mittag-Leffler.[70][71] The nomination archive reveals that Poincaré received a total of 51 nominations between 1904 and 1912, the year of his death.[72] Of the 58 nominations for the 1910 Nobel Prize, 34 named Poincaré.[72] Nominators included Nobel laureates Hendrik Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman (both of 1902), Marie Curie (of 1903), Albert Michelson (of 1907), Gabriel Lippmann (of 1908) and Guglielmo Marconi (of 1909).[72]
The fact that renowned theoretical physicists like Poincaré, Boltzmann or Gibbs were not awarded the Nobel Prize is seen as evidence that the Nobel committee had more regard for experimentation than theory.[73][74] In Poincaré's case, several of those who nominated him pointed out that the greatest problem was to name a specific discovery, invention, or technique.[70]
Bibliography[edit]
Poincaré's writings in English translation[edit]
Popular writings on the philosophy of science:
On algebraic topology:
On celestial mechanics:
On the philosophy of mathematics:
Other:
Exhaustive bibliography of English translations:
