Jacques Tits

Jacques Tits
Jacques Tits in May 2008
Born	(1930-08-12) 12 August 1930 (age 86) Uccle, Belgium
Residence	France
Citizenship	Belgian (1930–1974) French (since 1974)
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Free University of Brussels Vrije Universiteit Brussel University of Bonn Collège de France French Academy of Sciences
Doctoral advisor	Paul Libois
Doctoral students	Francis Buekenhout Jens Carsten Jantzen Karl-Otto Stöhr Jean-Pierre Tignol
Known for	The Tits group, the Tits alternative, Tits buildings
Notable awards	Cantor medal (1996) Abel Prize (2008, with John G. Thompson)

Jacques Tits (French: [tits]; born 12 August 1930 in Uccle) is a Belgium-born French mathematician who works on group theory and incidence geometry, and who introduced Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, and the Tits group.

Tits was born in Uccle to Léon Tits, a professor, and Lousia André. Jacques attended the Athénée of Uccle and the Free University of Brussels. His thesis advisor was Paul Libois, and Tits graduated with his doctorate in 1950 with the dissertation Généralisation des groupes projectifs basés sur la notion de transitivité. His academic career includes professorships at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) (1962–1964), the University of Bonn (1964–1974) and the Collège de France in Paris, until becoming emeritus in 2000. He changed his citizenship to French in 1974 in order to teach at the Collège de France, which at that point required French citizenship. Because Belgian nationality law did not allow dual nationality at the time, he renounced his Belgian citizenship. He has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since then.