Émile Clément Cotton (5 February 1872 – 14 March 1950) was a professor of mathematics at the

University of Grenoble The Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA, French: meaning "''Grenoble Alps University''") is a public research university in Grenoble, France. Founded in 1339, it is the third largest university in France with about 60,000 students and over 3,000 resea ...

. His PhD thesis studied

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multili ...

in three dimensions, with the introduction of the

Cotton tensor In differential geometry, the Cotton tensor on a (pseudo)- Riemannian manifold of dimension ''n'' is a third-order tensor concomitant of the metric. The vanishing of the Cotton tensor for is necessary and sufficient condition for the manifold ...

. He held the professorship from 1904 until his 1942 retirement. He was the brother of

Aimé Cotton Aimé Auguste Cotton (9 October 1869 – 16 April 1951) was a French physicist known for his studies of the interaction of light with chiral molecules. In the absorption bands of these molecules, he discovered large values of optical rotator ...

References

Differential geometers French mathematicians 1872 births 1950 deaths {{mathematician-stub