André Lichnerowicz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
André Lichnerowicz
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Lichnerowicz in 1978
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| Born | January 21, 1915 Bourbon l'Archambault, France
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| Died | December 11, 1998 (aged 83) |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Known for | Lichnerowicz conjecture Lichnerowicz Laplacian Lichnerowicz formula Poisson manifold |
| Awards | Peccot Lectures, 1944 Prix de la langue française, 1988 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Paris College de France |
| Thesis | Problemes Globaux en Mécanique Relativiste (1939) |
| Doctoral advisor | Georges Darmois |
| Doctoral students | Thierry Aubin Claude Berge Edmond Bonan Marcel Berger Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat Raymond Couty Paul Gauduchon Richard Kerner Yvette Kosmann Ramon Lapiedra i Civera Charles-Michel Marle Jean-Marie Souriau Marie-Hélène Schwartz |
André Lichnerowicz (born January 21, 1915, in Bourbon-l'Archambault, France – died December 11, 1998, in Paris, France) was a famous French mathematician and physicist. He was a pioneer in a field called Poisson geometry, which is a branch of mathematics.
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About André Lichnerowicz
André Lichnerowicz came from a family of smart people. His grandfather moved to France from Poland. His father was a classics teacher, and his mother was one of the first women in France to become a math teacher. His aunt was also a writer.
His Education and Early Career
André went to a top high school in Paris, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Then he studied at the École Normale Supérieure, a very selective school. In 1936, he became a certified teacher (agrégation). After that, he joined the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), which is a big research organization in France. He was one of the first researchers to be hired there.
André studied a type of math called differential geometry with a famous mathematician named Élie Cartan. In 1939, he finished his PhD. His main project was about "Global problems in relativistic mechanics." This looked at how things work in Einstein's theory of relativity.
Teaching During World War II
André's teaching career started during World War II, when Nazi Germany occupied France. In 1941, he began teaching at the University of Strasbourg. Because of the war, the university had to move to another city, Clermont Ferrand. It only returned to Strasbourg in 1945 after the war ended. In 1943, he was arrested during a raid but managed to get away. In 1944, he was invited to give special lectures at the Collège de France.
A Distinguished Professor
From 1949 to 1952, André taught at the University of Paris. In 1952, he became a professor at the Collège de France, a very prestigious institution. He worked there until he retired in 1986.
André was also the president of the Société mathématique de France (French Mathematical Society) in 1959. He became a member of many important science groups around the world, like the French Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Awards and Recognition
In 1988, he won the Prix de la langue française. This award recognized how well he used the French language in his writings. After he passed away, he also received the Peano Prize in 2001 for his book Triangle of Thoughts. In 2008, a special award, the André Lichnerowicz Prize, was created in his honor. It celebrates new discoveries in Poisson geometry, a field he helped create.
André Lichnerowicz was also a religious person. He was the vice-president of a Catholic intellectual group in France.
His Mathematical Discoveries
André Lichnerowicz was interested in how math and physics connect. He worked on many areas of math, including Riemannian geometry, symplectic geometry, and general relativity.
Contributions to Relativity
His work on general relativity started with his PhD. He studied the conditions needed for a certain type of "metric" (a way to measure distances in curved space) to be a solution to Einstein's equations. These equations describe how gravity works. He also worked on gravitational waves and how particles behave in curved space-time.
Ideas in Geometry
In 1944, he proposed an idea about certain 4-dimensional shapes, which is now called the Lichnerowicz conjecture. In 1958, he was one of the first to connect the "spectrum" of the Laplace operator (a mathematical tool) to the "curvature" of a shape. This helped us understand how the shape of something affects its properties. In 1963, he proved the Lichnerowicz formula. This formula links two important mathematical tools, the Dirac operator and the Laplace–Beltrami operator, which are used to study special mathematical objects called "spinors."
Founding Poisson Geometry
In the 1970s, André Lichnerowicz started working on symplectic geometry and dynamical systems (systems that change over time). His work led to the creation of a new field called Poisson geometry. He helped define what a Poisson manifold is. This is a special kind of mathematical space. He also introduced an "operator" that helps us understand "Poisson cohomology," which is a way to study these spaces. His work in 1978 on "deformation quantization" opened up a whole new area of research. This field looks at how to change (or "deform") mathematical structures to connect them to quantum mechanics.
André Lichnerowicz wrote over 350 scientific papers and guided 24 students through their PhDs.
Improving Math Education
Besides his research, André Lichnerowicz cared a lot about how math was taught. From 1963 to 1966, he led an international group focused on math education.
The "New Math" Movement
In 1967, the French government asked him to lead a group of 18 math teachers. This group, called the Lichnerowicz Commission, suggested big changes to how math was taught in schools. They wanted to focus on set theory and logic early on. They also wanted to introduce ideas like mathematical structures and complex numbers to older high school students. The idea was to teach math in a more logical, "axiomatic" way, starting from basic rules.
These changes became part of a worldwide movement known as New Math. However, many parents found it hard to help their kids with homework because the methods were so different. Teachers also felt unprepared. Because of these challenges, Lichnerowicz resigned, and the commission was stopped in 1973. Even so, the ideas from New Math continued to influence how math is taught in many places.
See Also
In Spanish: André Lichnerowicz para niños
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