| André Lichnerowicz | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 21, 1915 Bourbon l'Archambault |
| Died | December 11, 1998 (aged 83) Paris |
| Nationality | France |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Paris |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Doctoral advisor | Georges Darmois |
| Doctoral students | Thierry Aubin Lluis Bel Marcel Berger Michel Cahen Yvette Kosmann Jean-Marie Souriau Jean Vaillant Jorga Ibrahim |
André Lichnerowicz (January 21, 1915 – December 11, 1998) was a noted French differential geometer and mathematical physicist of Polish descent.
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His grandfather fought in Polish resistance against the Prussians. Forced to flee Poland in 1860, he finally settled in France, where he married a woman from Auvergne. Lichnerowicz's father held agrégation in classics, while his mother, a descendant of paper makers, was one of the first women to earn the agrégation in mathematics. André attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, gaining aggregation in 1936. After two years, he entered the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) as one of the first researchers recruited by this institution.
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, Yvette Kosmann, and Thibault Damour.
While pursuing an active research career, Lichnerowicz made time for pedagogy. In 1967 the French government created the Lichnerowicz Commission made up of 18 teachers of mathematics. The commission recommended a curriculum based on set theory and logic with an early introduction to mathematical structures. It recommended introduction to complex numbers for seniors in high school, less computation-based instruction, and more development from premises. These reforms have been called a new math and have been repeated internationally. (see Mashaal (2006)).