250px Gustave Dumas (5 March 1872,

L'Etivaz L'Étivaz is a hard Swiss cheese made from raw cow's milk. It is classified as a Swiss-type or Alpine cheese, and is very similar to Gruyère surchoix in taste. Its place of origin, L'Etivaz, is a hamlet in the southwestern Swiss Alps, jus ...

Vaud Vaud ( ; french: (Canton de) Vaud, ; german: (Kanton) Waadt, or ), more formally the canton of Vaud, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of ten districts and its capital city is Lausanne. Its coat of arms b ...

, Switzerland – 11 July 1955) was a Swiss mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. Dumas received a baccalaureate degree from the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

, then another baccalaureate degree from the Sorbonne, and in 1904 a doctoral degree from the Sorbonne with dissertation ''Sur les fonctions à caractère algébrique dans le voisinage d'un point donné''. In 1906 he obtained his

habilitation 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 ...

qualification from Zürich's Federal Polytechnic School with habilitation dissertation ''Sur quelques cas d'irréductibilité des polynômes à coefficients rationnels''. From 1906 to 1913 Dumas taught higher mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic School. At the University of Lausanne's Engineering School, he became in 1913 a professor extraordinarius and in 1916 a professor ordinarius, retiring in 1942. At Lausanne he had an important influence on his student

Georges de Rham Georges de Rham (; 10 September 1903 – 9 October 1990) was a Swiss mathematician, known for his contributions to differential topology. Biography Georges de Rham was born on 10 September 1903 in Roche, a small village in the canton of Vaud in ...

, who became Dumas's assistant before graduating in 1925. Dumas served a two-year term as president of the

Swiss Mathematical Society The Swiss Mathematical Society (german: Schweizerische Mathematische Gesellschaft; french: Société Mathématique Suisse), founded in Basel on September 4, 1910, is the national mathematical society of Switzerland and a member society of the Europ ...

in 1922–1923. He was an Invited Speaker of 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 ...

in 1928 at Bologna.

Selected publications

"Sur quelques cas d'irréductibilité des polynômes à coefficients rationnels."
Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées 2 (1906): 191–258.
"Sur la résolution des singularités des surfaces."
CR Acad. Sci. Paris 152 (1911): 682–684. *"Sur le polygone de Newton et les courbes algébriques planes." Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici 1, no. 1 (1929): 120–141.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dumas, Gustave 1872 births 1955 deaths Swiss mathematicians University of Lausanne alumni University of Paris alumni University of Lausanne faculty Swiss expatriates in France