Bernadette Perrin-Riou (born 1 August 1955) is a French

number theorist Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Math ...

Early life

Perrin-Riou was born on 1 August 1955 in

Les Vans Les Vans (; oc, Los Vans) is a commune in the Ardèche department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southern France. Geography The village of Les Vans, the principal settlement of the canton of the same name in the south of the Ardèche ...

Ardèche Ardèche (; oc, Ardecha; frp, Ardecha) is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France. It is named after the river Ardèche and had a population of 328,278 as of 2019.France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. Her parents had both had a scientific education; her mother and father were a physicist and chemist, respectively. She was brought up, along with her sisters, in

Neuilly-sur-Seine Neuilly-sur-Seine (; literally 'Neuilly on Seine'), also known simply as Neuilly, is a commune in the department of Hauts-de-Seine in France, just west of Paris. Immediately adjacent to the city, the area is composed of mostly select residentia ...

Education

She entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles in 1974, completing her undergraduate work in 1977. She then took a research assistant position at the

Pierre and Marie Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University (french: link=no, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, UPMC), also known as Paris 6, was a public university, public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussi ...

in Paris. She received an advanced degree from

University of Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (French: ''Université Paris-Sud''), also known as University of Paris — XI (or as Université d'Orsay before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, in ...

in 1979, working with Georges Poitou; she then obtained a doctoral degree from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1983. Her thesis advisor was

John H. Coates John Henry Coates (26 January 1945 – 9 May 2022) was an Australian mathematician who was the Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom from 1986 to 2012. Early life and education Coates ...

, and her thesis was entitled "" ("Arithmetic of elliptic curves and Iwasawa theory").

Career

She became at UPMC in 1983, and was then invited to spend a year as a visiting professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

; she subsequently became a professor at the same university. In 1994 she moved to a position at

Orsay Orsay () is a Communes of France, commune in the Essonne Departments of France, department in Île-de-France in northern France. It is located in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. A fortifie ...

, which was primarily a research position (that is, with few teaching requirements). In the same year, she was invited to give an address at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

, which was held in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

, which she gave on " L p-" ("''p''-adic ''L''-functions").

Research

Perrin-Riou's research is in

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

, concentrating on ''p''-adic ''L''-functions and

Iwasawa theory In number theory, Iwasawa theory is the study of objects of arithmetic interest over infinite towers of number fields. It began as a Galois module theory of ideal class groups, initiated by (), as part of the theory of cyclotomic fields. In the ea ...

Awards

She was awarded the

Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics The Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics, also called the Satter Prize, is one of twenty-one prizes given out by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). It is presented biennially in recognition of an outstanding contribution to mathematics ...

prize in 1999, a prize established in 1990 for women in maths.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perrin-Riou, Bernadette 1955 births Living people French mathematicians French women mathematicians