Michèle Audin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Michèle Audin
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Michèle Audin in 2016
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| Born | 3 January 1954 Algiers, French Algeria
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| Died | 14 November 2025 (aged 71) |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater | Université Paris-Sud |
| Awards | Prix Ève Delacroix (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Symplectic geometry |
| Institutions | Université de Strasbourg |
| Thesis | Cobordismes d'immersions lagrangiennes et legendriennes (1986) |
| Doctoral advisor | François Latour |
Michèle Audin (born January 3, 1954, died November 14, 2025) was a French mathematician, writer, and university professor. She taught at several universities, including the University of Geneva and the University of Strasbourg. Her main research area was symplectic geometry, a complex branch of mathematics.
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Michèle Audin's Early Life and Education
Michèle Audin's parents were both mathematicians. Her father, Maurice Audin, was a mathematician, and her mother, Josette Audin, was a math teacher. They were involved in political activities related to Algeria's independence. Sadly, her father passed away when Michèle was a child in 1957.
She studied at a prestigious French school, the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles. Later, she earned her Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the University of Paris-Saclay. Her doctoral research focused on advanced mathematical topics.
From 1987, she worked as a professor at the Université de Strasbourg until her retirement in 2014. She also led an association called Femmes et mathématiques (Women and Mathematics) for two years, supporting women in the field.
In 2009, Michèle Audin declined a major French award, the Legion of Honour. She did this because she felt the French government had not fully addressed the circumstances of her father's death. Years later, in 2018, the French President acknowledged what happened to her father and apologized on behalf of France.
In 2013, she received the Prix Ève Delacroix award for her novel titled Une vie brève.
Exploring Michèle Audin's Mathematical Research
Michèle Audin's main research area was symplectic geometry. This is a complex part of mathematics that studies shapes and movements. Her early work built on ideas from mathematicians like René Thom and Vladimir Arnold. Later, she focused on how systems change over time, known as Hamiltonian systems.
In her book Spinning tops: A Course on Integrable Systems, she explored whether certain systems can be solved or understood easily. This was a key question in her later studies. She also wrote about this in an article concerning the 'satellite problem'.
She also studied the Kovalevskaya Top, a famous problem in physics and math. This led her to write a book about the mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya, combining math, history, and personal reflections. Michèle Audin also helped publish letters between famous mathematicians Henri Cartan and André Weil. She wrote the first biography of Jacques Feldbau and documented the history of modern holomorphic dynamics, a field of math, featuring mathematicians like Pierre Fatou and Gaston Julia.
She often wrote articles about the history of mathematics for a website called Images des mathématiques, which helps make math understandable to everyone.
Michèle Audin's Literary Contributions
Besides her math work, Michèle Audin was also a very active writer. From 2009, she was part of a special group of writers called Oulipo.
Writing About the Paris Commune
Michèle Audin was very interested in the history of the Paris Commune of 1871. This was a period of significant social and political change in Paris. She wrote five books about it, including two novels and three historical works. Her books explored the events and people of that time.
For example, one book shared the writings of Eugène Varlin. Another published letters from a paramedic named Alix Payen. Her last historical book, La Semaine sanglante: Mai 1871, looked at the number of people who died during a difficult week in May 1871.
Creative Writing with Oulipo
Michèle Audin was invited to an Oulipo meeting after her book Souvenirs sur Sofia Kovalevskaya was published. This book blended stories, math, and letters in a unique way. It even included references to other Oulipo writers like Georges Perec and Italo Calvino.
She joined Oulipo in 2009. She was the first member to be both a mathematician and a writer. Math inspired her writing, especially the special rules (called 'constraints') she created. For instance, her novel La formule de Stokes features a mathematical formula as its main character.
She created writing rules based on geometry, like Pascal's or Désargues's constraint. She used Pascal's constraint in her online story Mai Quai Conti. This story explored the history of the French Academy of Sciences during the Paris Commune. The characters' relationships were shaped by geometric patterns.
She also collaborated with Ian Monk on a writing form called 'nonine'. This was a new version of a poetic style called sestina, using different number patterns.
Her novel Cent vingt et un jours used a complex writing structure called an 'onzine'. In this style, characters and story elements change in a set order. The last word of one chapter becomes the first word of the next, like in a sestina poem.
Michèle Audin's Published Works
Literature
- La formule de Stokes, roman, Cassini, 2016.
- Mademoiselle Haas, Gallimard, 2016.
- Cent vingt et un jours, Gallimard, 2014. Translated into English by Christiana Hills as One Hundred Twenty-One Days, Deep Vellum, 2016.
- Une vie brève, Gallimard, 2013.
History of Mathematics
- Correspondance entre Henri Cartan et André Weil (1928-1991), Documents Mathématiques 6, Société Mathématique de France, 2011.
- Une histoire de Jacques Feldbau, Société mathématique de France, collection T, 2010.
- Fatou, Julia, Montel, le Grand Prix des sciences mathématiques de 1918, et après, Springer, 2009.
- Souvenirs sur Sofia Kovalevskaya, Calvage et Mounet, 2008.
Mathematics
- Géométrie, EDP-Sciences, 2005.
- Hamiltonian systems and their integrability, Translated from the 2001 French original by Anna Pierrehumbert. Translation edited by Donald Babbitt. SMF/AMS Texts and Monographs, vol. 15. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI; Société mathématique de France, Paris, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8218-4413-7, MR2440371
- The topology of torus actions on symplectic manifolds, Progress in Mathematics, vol. 93, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 1991. ISBN: 3-7643-2602-6, MR1106194
See also
In Spanish: Michèle Audin para niños
