Jean Leray
| Jean Leray | |
|---|---|
Jean Leray in 1961
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| Born |
7 November 1906 Chantenay-sur-Loire (today part of Nantes) |
| Died | 10 November 1998 (aged 92) La Baule |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
University of Nancy University of Paris Collège de France |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Doctoral advisor | Henri Villat |
| Doctoral students |
Armand Borel István Fáry Jean Vaillant Claude Wagschal |
| Known for | partial differential equations, algebraic topology |
| Notable awards | Malaxa Prize (1938) Feltrinelli Prize (1971) Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1979) Lomonosov Gold Medal (1988) |
Jean Leray (French: [ləʁɛ]; 7 November 1906 – 10 November 1998) was a French mathematician, who worked on both partial differential equations and algebraic topology.
He was born in Chantenay-sur-Loire (today part of Nantes). He studied at École Normale Supérieure from 1926 to 1929. He received his Ph.D. in 1933. Leray wrote an important paper that founded the study of weak solutions of the Navier–Stokes equations. Together with Juliusz Schauder, he discovered a topological invariant, now called the Leray–Schauder degree, which they applied to prove the existence of solutions for partial differential equations lacking uniqueness.
From 1938 to 1939 he was professor at the University of Nancy. He did not join the Bourbaki group, although he was close with its founders.
His main work in topology was carried out while he was in a prisoner of war camp in Edelbach, Austria from 1940 to 1945. He concealed his expertise on differential equations, fearing that its connections with applied mathematics could lead him to be asked to do war work.
Leray's work of this period proved seminal to the development of spectral sequences and sheaves. These were subsequently developed by many others, each separately becoming an important tool in homological algebra.
He returned to work on partial differential equations from about 1950.
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