Christine Bernardi (18 May 1955 – 10 March 2018) was a French mathematician known for her research on

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

partial differential equation In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a Multivariable calculus, multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be sol ...

Life

Bernardi was born in Paris, and entered the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1974. She earned a master's degree in 1975, a

diplôme d'études approfondies A Master of Advanced Studies or Master of Advanced Study (MAS, M.A.S., or MASt) is a postgraduate degree awarded in various countries. Master of Advanced Studies programs may be non-consecutive programs tailored for "specific groups of working pro ...

in numerical analysis in 1978, a

doctorat de troisième cycle A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

in 1979, and a

doctorat d'état Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in 1986. Her 1986 dissertation, ''Contribution à l'analyse numérique de problèmes non linéaires'', was supervised by Pierre-Arnaud Raviart. She became a researcher for the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

in 1979, becoming a director of research in 1992. She worked for CNRS at the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions of

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 ...

, and retired for health reasons roughly a year before her death.

Books

Bernardi is the author of: *''Approximations spectrales de problèmes aux limites elliptiques pectral approximations of elliptic boundary value problems' (with Yvon Maday, Springer, 1992) *''Spectral methods for axisymmetric domains'' (with

Monique Dauge Monique Dauge (born 1956) is a French mathematician and numerical analyst specializing in partial differential equations, spectral theory, and applications to scientific computing. She is an emeritus senior researcher at the French National Cent ...

and Yvon Maday, North-Holland, 1999) *''Discrétisations variationnelles de problèmes aux limites elliptiques ariational discretizations of elliptic boundary value problems' (with Yvon Maday and Francesca Rapetti, Springer, 2004).

Recognition

In 1995, Bernardi was the winner of the Blaise Pascal Prize, awarded annually for outstanding research in numerical analysis by a young researcher by the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

in consultation with the ''Groupe thématique pour l'Avancement des Méthodes Numériques de l'Ingénieur'' of the ''Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles''. She was the first woman to win the prize since its origin in 1985, and until Valérie Perrier won in 2003 she was the only woman to win it. In 2018, the International Conference on Spectral and High Order Methods initiated the Christine Bernardi Award, for outstanding research by a young woman in "high-order approximations for the solution of PDE’s".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernardi, Christine 1955 births 2018 deaths 20th-century French mathematicians French women mathematicians Scientists from Paris 21st-century French mathematicians Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research