Michèle Audin (

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

, 3 January, 1954) is a French mathematician, writer, and a former professor. She has worked as a professor at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

, the

University of Paris-Saclay Paris-Saclay University (, ) is a combined Research institute, technological research institute and Public university, public research university in Orsay, France. Paris-Saclay was established in 2019 after the merger of four technical ''grandes ...

and most recently at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. Founded in the 16th century by Johannes Sturm, it was a center of intellectual life during ...

, where she performed research notably in the area of

symplectic geometry Symplectic geometry is a branch of differential geometry and differential topology that studies symplectic manifolds; that is, differentiable manifolds equipped with a closed, nondegenerate 2-form. Symplectic geometry has its origins in the ...

Biography

Michéle Audin is the daughter of mathematician Maurice Audin and mathematics teacher , both

pied-noirs The (; ; : ) are an ethno-cultural group of people of French and other European descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962. Many of them departed for mainland France during and after the ...

and political activists for the independence of Algeria. While she was a child, her father died under torture in June 1957 in

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

, after being arrested by General

Jacques Massu Jacques Émile Massu (; 5 May 1908 – 26 October 2002) was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez Crisis. He led French troops in the Battle of Algiers, first supporting and later ...

's paratroopers. She studied at the

École normale supérieure de jeunes filles The ''École normale supérieure de jeunes filles'' (also, ''École normale supérieure de Sèvres'') was a French institute of higher education, in Sèvres, now a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The school educated girls only, especially as te ...

(now merged into the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

but at the time a separate institution) and then she earned a Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the

, with a thesis written under the supervision of François Latour, entitled ''Cobordismes d'immersions lagrangiennes et legendriens'' obordisms of Lagrangian and Legendrian immersions She then became a professor at the (IRMA) of the Université de Strasbourg from 1987 until her early retirement in 2014. She was president of the association Femmes et mathématiques in 1990 and 1991. In 2009 she refused to receive the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

, on the grounds that the President of France,

Nicolas Sarkozy Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa ( ; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012. In 2021, he was found guilty of having tried to bribe a judge in 2014 to obtain information ...

, had refused to respond to a letter written by her mother regarding the disappearance of her father. Finally in September 2018, French president

Emmanuel Macron Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...

admitted that Maurice Audin was tortured to death and apologized on behalf of France. In 2013 she was awarded the Prix Ève Delacroix for her novel ''Une vie brève''.

Research

Michèle Audin's research work mainly belongs to the field of

. Her PhD thesis draws on

René Thom René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he became ...

's theory of

cobordism In mathematics, cobordism is a fundamental equivalence relation on the class of compact space, compact manifolds of the same dimension, set up using the concept of the boundary (topology), boundary (French ''wikt:bord#French, bord'', giving ''cob ...

to contribute to the founding program of symplectic topology launched by the Russian mathematician

Vladimir Arnold Vladimir Igorevich Arnold (or Arnol'd; , ; 12 June 1937 – 3 June 2010) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. He is best known for the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem regarding the stability of integrable systems, and contributed to s ...

. Audin then oriented her research to dynamical aspects, and more specifically to Hamiltonian systems. In her monograph "''Spinning tops: A Course on Integrable Systems''", Audin discusses in detail the question of whether a

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models ...

is integrable, a central question of her later research. A particularly enlightening example comes from her article "''Sur la réduction symplectique appliquée à la non-intégrabilité du problème du satellite''". Audin's work on Kovalevskaya top led her to write another book, both mathematical, historical and more personal on this mathematician: "''Souvenirs sur

Sofia Kovalevskaya Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (; born Korvin-Krukovskaya; – 10 February 1891) was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics a ...

"''. She also published the correspondence (1928-1991) of two members of the

Bourbaki group Bourbaki(s) may refer to : Persons and science * Charles-Denis Bourbaki (1816–1897), French general, son of Constantin Denis Bourbaki * Colonel Constantin Denis Bourbaki (1787–1827), officer in the Greek War of Independence and serving in t ...

, the mathematicians

Henri Cartan Henri Paul Cartan (; 8 July 1904 – 13 August 2008) was a French mathematician who made substantial contributions to algebraic topology. He was the son of the mathematician Élie Cartan, nephew of mathematician Anna Cartan, oldest brother of c ...

and

André Weil André Weil (; ; 6 May 1906 – 6 August 1998) was a French mathematician, known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. His influence is du ...

, she wrote the first biography of the mathematician

Jacques Feldbau Jacques Feldbau was a French mathematician, born on 22 October 1914 in Strasbourg, of an Alsatian Jewish traditionalist family. He died on 22 April 1945 at the ''Ganacker'' Camp, annex of the concentration camp of Flossenbürg in Germany. As a ...

, and she documented the genesis of the modern

holomorphic dynamics Complex dynamics, or holomorphic dynamics, is the study of dynamical systems obtained by iterating a complex analytic mapping. This article focuses on the case of algebraic dynamics, where a polynomial or rational function is iterated. In geomet ...

, with detailed portraits of the main protagonists:

Pierre Fatou Pierre Joseph Louis Fatou (28 February 1878 – 9 August 1929) was a French mathematician and astronomer. He is known for major contributions to several branches of mathematical analysis, analysis. The Fatou lemma and the Fatou set are named aft ...

Gaston Julia Gaston Maurice Julia (3 February 1893 – 19 March 1978) was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by Benoit Mandelbrot; the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related. He founded, ind ...

and

Paul Montel Paul Antoine Aristide Montel (29 April 1876 – 22 January 1975) was a French mathematician. He was born in Nice, France and died in Paris, France. He researched mostly on holomorphic functions in complex analysis. Montel was a student of Émile ...

. She contributes regularly on historical subjects to the mathematics popularisation website .

As a writer

Alongside her activity as a mathematician, Audin leads an intense literary activity on her own and, since 2009, within the

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for ; roughly translated as "workshop of potential literature", stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It wa ...

History of the Paris Commune

Passionate about the insurrection of the

Paris Commune of 1871 The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

, Audin has written five books on this topic to document its history as well as its memory: two novels published by Gallimard, ''Comme une rivière bleue'' (2017) and ''Josée Meunier, 19 rue des Juifs'' (2021), as well as three historical books published by . The first, ''Eugène Varlin, bookbinding worker 1839-1871'' (2019), is an anthology of the various writings of Eugène Varlin, some of which have not been published since their original release. The second, ''C'est la nuit surtout que le combat devient furieux'' (2020), publishes the correspondence between

Alix Payen Alix Payen (born Milliet on May 18, 1842, in Le Mans and died on December 24, 1903, in Paris) was a French Communards, Communard Emergency medical technician, ambulance driver. She is known for her letters to her family, which were published afte ...

, an unknown paramedic, and her Fourierist family, during the few months of the Parisian insurrection. The last, ''La Semaine sanglante: Mai 1871''. ''Légendes et comptes'' (2021), proposes a new counting of the deaths of

Bloody Week The ''Semaine sanglante'' ("") was a weeklong battle in Paris from 21 to 28 May 1871, during which the French Army recaptured the city from the Paris Commune. This was the final battle of the Paris Commune. Following the Treaty of Frankfur ...

, going up to “certainly 15,000 dead”.

Activity within the Oulipo

Audin was guest of honor at a meeting of

on the initiative of

Jacques Roubaud Jacques Roubaud (; 5 December 1932 – 5 December 2024) was a French poet, writer, and mathematician. Life and career Jacques Roubaud taught mathematics at University of Paris X Nanterre and poetry at EHESS. A member of the Oulipo group, he h ...

, following the publication of her book ''Souvenirs sur Sofia Kovalevskaya'', which mixes in a discontinuous form anecdotes, precise mathematics, testimonials, excerpts of correspondence with commentary and even literary pastiches. There are references to the Oulipo in testimonial chapters entitled “''Je me souviens''” in reference to

Georges Perec Georges Perec (; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Ho ...

, or even in a pastiche of

Cosmicomics ''Cosmicomics'' () is a collection of twelve short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. The stories were originally published between 1964 and 1965 in the Italian periodicals ''Il Caffè'' and ''Il ...

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...

. She became part of Oulipo in 2009, as the first member to be both a mathematician and a writer. Mathematics is for her both a source of inspiration for the constraints she invents and a recurring theme in her literary work. For example, in her novel ''La formule de Stokes'', the heroine is a mathematical formula. She invented

constraints Constraint may refer to: * Constraint (computer-aided design), a demarcation of geometrical characteristics between two or more entities or solid modeling bodies * Constraint (mathematics), a condition of an optimization problem that the solution m ...

of a geometric nature such as Pascal's or Désargues' constraint. Pascal's constraint was experienced in her online story ''Mai Quai Conti'' which evokes the history of the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

during the Paris Commune: the relationships between the characters of the story are determined by the position of the points of a geometric figure illustrating

Pascal's theorem In projective geometry, Pascal's theorem (also known as the ''hexagrammum mysticum theorem'', Latin for mystical hexagram) states that if six arbitrary points are chosen on a conic (which may be an ellipse, parabola or hyperbola in an appropriat ...

. She also worked with

Ian Monk Ian Monk (born 1960) is a British writer and translator, based in Paris, France.Ian Monk
Oulipo website (retrieved 29 de ...

on ''nonine'', i.e. a variant of the

sestina A sestina (, from ''sesto'', sixth; Old Occitan: ''cledisat'' ; also known as ''sestine'', ''sextine'', ''sextain'') is a fixed verse, fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The wor ...

based on numbers which are not Queneau numbers, and therefore with which the system of permutation of the sestina does not work. Her first novel, ''Cent vingt et un jours'', is based on an ''onzine'', i.e. a ''quenine'' of order 11 (variant of the sestina) from which characters, literary references and other elements of the narrative permute in a regulated manner. As in the poetic sestina, the last word of a chapter is the same as the first word of the next chapter.

Publications

Literature

* ''La formule de Stokes, roman'', Cassini, 2016. * ''Mademoiselle Haas'', Gallimard, 2016. * ''Cent vingt et un jours'', Gallimard, 2014. Translated into English by Christiana Hills as ''One Hundred Twenty-One Days'', Deep Vellum, 2016. * ''Une vie brève'', Gallimard, 2013.

History of Mathematics

* ''Correspondance entre

(1928-1991)'', Documents Mathématiques 6, Société Mathématique de France, 2011. * ''Une histoire de Jacques Feldbau'',

Société mathématique de France Groupe Lactalis S.A. (doing business as Lactalis) is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier S.A. Lactalis is the largest dairy pr ...

, collection T, 2010. * ''Fatou, Julia, Montel, le Grand Prix des sciences mathématiques de 1918, et après'', Springer, 2009 * ''Souvenirs sur Sofia Kovalevskaya'', Calvage et Mounet, 2008.

Mathematics

* ''Géométrie'', EDP-Sciences, 2005. * ''Hamiltonian systems and their integrability'', Translated from the 2001 French original by Anna Pierrehumbert. Translation edited by Donald Babbitt. SMF/AMS Texts and Monographs, vol. 15.

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, Providence, RI;

, Paris, 2008. , * ''The topology of torus actions on symplectic manifolds'', Progress in Mathematics, vol. 93, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 1991. ,

References

External links

Page about Michèle Audin on the Website of l'IRMA

Page about Michèle Audin on the official Website of l'Oulipo

Michèle Audin, ''Publier sous l’Occupation. Autour du cas de Jacques Feldbau et de l’académie des sciences''

Michèle Audin, ''La vérité sur la Poldévie''

Michèle Audin, ''Carrés imparfaits''

All articles written by Michèle Audin are in ''Images des Mathématiques''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Audin, Michele People from Algiers 1954 births Living people French geometers Oulipo members Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Academic staff of the University of Geneva École Normale Supérieure alumni Academic staff of Paris-Saclay University University of Paris alumni 20th-century French mathematicians 21st-century French mathematicians 20th-century French women mathematicians 21st-century French women mathematicians Legion of Honour refusals