Georges Bruhat (21 December 18871 January 1945In the dedication by

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (; born 29 December 1923) is a French mathematician and physicist. She has made seminal contributions to the study of Einstein's general theory of relativity, by showing that the Einstein equations can be put into the form o ...

: The date is given as December 31, 1944 in .) was a French physicist.

Life and academic career

Bruhat studied physics from 1906 until 1909 at the École normale supérieure of Paris (ENS), with, among other,

Henri Abraham Henri Abraham (1868–1943) was a French physicist who made important contributions to the science of radio waves. He performed some of the first measurements of the propagation velocity of radio waves, helped develop France's first triode vacu ...

Marcel Brillouin Louis Marcel Brillouin (; 19 December 1854 – 16 June 1948) was a French physicist and mathematician. Born in Saint-Martin-lès-Melle, Deux-Sèvres, France, his father was a painter who moved to Paris when Marcel was a boy. There he attende ...

and

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 ...

, and at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

, among others with

Gabriel Lippmann Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann (16 August 1845 – 13 July 1921) was a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference. ...

and Edmond Bouty. After being awarded a first degree in mathematics and physics, he taught for a year at Gymnasium and afterwards was an assistant at the École normale supérieure de Paris, which gave him time to prepare his PhD thesis with Aimé Cotton in

Optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...

, which he defended in 1914 before the start of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. During the war he was involved with the development of devices for detection via sound, for which he received the Croix de Guerre. Starting in 1919 he became a professor at

University of Lille The University of Lille (french: Université de Lille, abbreviated as ULille, UDL or univ-lille) is a French public research university based in Lille, Hauts-de-France. It has its origins in the University of Douai (1559), and resulted from the ...

and then in 1927 at the Faculté des sciences in Paris, assigned to ENS. In 1935 he became acting director and in 1941/42 Director of ENS. In 1940 he succeeded Eugene Bloch who had been removed by the

Vichy Regime Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...

's antisemitic laws. In 1944 he was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

since he was unwilling to collaborate in locating a student member of the

French resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

at the school. On 16 August 1944, he was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp and died on 1 January 1945 in Sachsenhausen of a lung infection. Georges Bruhat performed research in optics (for instance optically active media, double refraction, wavelength dependencies of absorption and refractive index) and was known in France for his four-volume physics texts (''Cours de physique générale'', Masson). The volume on electricity appeared in 1924 (8. Edition 1963), that on thermodynamics in 1926 (6. Edition 1968 revised by Alfred Kastler), the volume on optics in 1930 (6. Edition 1968, revised by Kastler), and that on mechanics in 1934 (6. Edition, 1967). A monograph on polarisation was published in 1930 (Traité de la Polarimétrie). He is the father of mathematician

François Bruhat François Georges René Bruhat (; 8 April 1929 – 17 July 2007) was a French mathematician who worked on algebraic groups. The Bruhat order of a Weyl group, the Bruhat decomposition, and the Schwartz–Bruhat functions are named after him. ...

and physicist

. The Three Physicists Prize (Prix des trois physiciens) was founded in 1951 to honor Georges Bruhat along with Eugene Bloch and Henri Abraham.

Publications

* Georges Bruhat ; ''Cours de physique générale''. Le cours comporte les quatre volumes suivants : ** ''Électricité'', Masson (8th édition-1963), 912 pp; revue par G. Goudet. ** ''Thermodynamique'', Masson (6th édition-1968), 912 p. 6th édition revue et augmentée par Alfred Kastler, prix Nobel de physique 1966. ** ''Optique'', Masson (6th édition-1965), 1026 p. revue et augmentée par Alfred Kastler. Rééditée par Dunod (2004) : . ** ''Mécanique'', Masson (6th édition-1967), 726 p. d'après son cours donné à l'École normale supérieure de jeunes filles, revue par A. Foch. * ''Traité de Polarimétrie'', éditions de la Revue d'Optique, 1930. * ''Le Soleil'', librairie Félix Alcan, Nouvelle collection scientifique, 1931. * ''Les Etoiles'', librairie Félix Alcan, Nouvelle collection scientifique, 1939.
Books listed at Worldcat

Literature

* ''Les trois physiciens Henri Abraham, Eugène Bloch, Georges Bruhat'', Éditions ENS Rue d'Ulm, 2009.

References

Mathematical physicists École Normale Supérieure alumni 20th-century French mathematicians 20th-century French physicists French people who died in Nazi concentration camps 1887 births 1945 deaths People who died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp