Jean-Pierre Serre
Jean-Pierre Serre (French: [sɛʁ]; born 15 September 1926) is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954, the Wolf Prize in 2000 and the inaugural Abel Prize in 2003.
Jean-Pierre Serre
15 September 1926
- Fields Medal (1954)
- ForMemRS (1974)
- Balzan Prize (1985)
- CNRS Gold medal (1987)
- Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1995)
- Wolf Prize in Mathematics (2000)
- Abel Prize (2003)
Biography[edit]
Personal life[edit]
Born in Bages, Pyrénées-Orientales, to pharmacist parents, Serre was educated at the Lycée de Nîmes and then from 1945 to 1948 at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.[1] He was awarded his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1951. From 1948 to 1954 he held positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. In 1956 he was elected professor at the Collège de France, a position he held until his retirement in 1994. His wife, Professor Josiane Heulot-Serre, was a chemist; she also was the director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles. Their daughter is the former French diplomat, historian and writer Claudine Monteil. The French mathematician Denis Serre is his nephew. He practices skiing, table tennis, and rock climbing (in Fontainebleau).
Career[edit]
From a very young age he was an outstanding figure in the school of Henri Cartan,[2] working on algebraic topology, several complex variables and then commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, where he introduced sheaf theory and homological algebra techniques. Serre's thesis concerned the Leray–Serre spectral sequence associated to a fibration. Together with Cartan, Serre established the technique of using Eilenberg–MacLane spaces for computing homotopy groups of spheres, which at that time was one of the major problems in topology.
In his speech at the Fields Medal award ceremony in 1954, Hermann Weyl gave high praise to Serre, and also made the point that the award was for the first time awarded to a non-analyst. Serre subsequently changed his research focus.
Honors and awards[edit]
Serre, at twenty-seven in 1954, was and still is the youngest person ever to have been awarded the Fields Medal. He went on to win the Balzan Prize in 1985, the Steele Prize in 1995, the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2000, and was the first recipient of the Abel Prize in 2003. He has been awarded other prizes, such as the Gold Medal of the French National Scientific Research Centre (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS).
He is a foreign member of several scientific Academies (US, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the Royal Society, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978),[6] American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[7] National Academy of Sciences,[8] the American Philosophical Society[9]) and has received many honorary degrees (from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Oslo and others). In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[10]
Serre has been awarded the highest honors in France as Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (Grand Croix de la Légion d'Honneur) and Grand Cross of the Legion of Merit (Grand Croix de l'Ordre National du Mérite).