André Lichnerowicz

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André Lichnerowicz (January 21, 1915 – December 11, 1998) was a noted French differential geometer and mathematical physicist of Polish descent.

1 Biography
2 Works in English translation
3 Tribute
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

His father fought in Polish resistance against the Prussians. His mother was a descendant of paper makers, and one of the first women to earn the aggregation in mathematics. André attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, gaining aggregation in 1936. He then joined the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Lichnerowicz studied differential geometry under Élie Cartan. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1939 under the supervision of Georges Darmois, concerned what are now called the Lichnerowicz matching conditions in general relativity.

His academic career began under the cloud of German occupation, during World War II. He taught at the University of Strasbourg, which was moved to Clermont Ferrand and only returned to Strasbourg in 1945, where he taught until 1949. From 1949-1952 he taught at the University of Paris. In 1952 he was appointed to the Collège de France, where he taught until his retirement in 1986. He was made a member of the Académie des Sciences in 1963.

His Ph.D. students included Thierry Aubin, Marcel Berger, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, and Thibault Damour.

While pursuing an active research career, Lichnerowicz made time for pedagogy, and is credited with carrying out various required reforms in higher education in postwar France.

[edit] Works in English translation

Elements of Tensor Calculus , John Wiley and Sons, 1962.
Relativistic Hydrodynamics and Magnetohydrodynamics, W. A. Benjamin, 1967.
Linear Algebra and Analysis' Holden Day, 1967.
Geometry of Groups of Transformations, Leyden: Noordhoff, [1958] 1976.
Global Theory of Connection and Holonomy Groups Leyden: Noordhoff, [1955] 1976.
Magnetohydrodynamics: Waves and Shock Waves in Curved Space-Time Kluwer, Springer 1994. ISBN 0792328051
with Alexandre Favre, Henri Guitton, and Jean Guitton, Chaos and Determinism, Johns Hopkins, 1995.
with Alain Connes, and Marco Schutzenberger, Triangle of Thoughts, American Mathematical Society, 2000.

[edit] Tribute

Cahen, M.; Lichnerowicz, André; Flato, M., eds., Differential Geometry and Relativity: A Volume in Honour of André Lichnerowicz on His 60th Birthday, Reidel, 1976. ISBN 9027707456

[edit] References

Berger, Marcel; & Bourguignon, Jean-Pierre; & Choquet-Bruhat, Yvonne; & Marle, Charles-Michel; & Revuz, André (December 1999). "André Lichnerowicz (1915-1998)". Notices of the American Mathematical Society 46: 1387–1396. .
Alain Connes, "Biographical Note: André Lichnerowicz," in Triangle of Thoughts (see above), 173-5.