The Peccot Lecture (''Cours Peccot'' in French) is a semester-long mathematics course given at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...

. Each course is given by a mathematician under 30 years old who has distinguished themselves by their promising work. The course consists in a series of conferences during which the laureate exposes their recent research works. Being a Peccot lecturer is a distinction that often foresees an exceptional scientific career. Several future recipients of the

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...

Abel Prize The Abel Prize ( ; no, Abelprisen ) is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Prizes. ...

, members of 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 ...

, and professors at the

are among the laureates. Some of the most illustrious recipients include

Émile Borel Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Math ...

and the Fields medalists

Laurent Schwartz Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (; 5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 19 ...

Jean-Pierre Serre Jean-Pierre Serre (; born 15 September 1926) is a French mathematician who has made contributions to algebraic topology, algebraic geometry, and algebraic number theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954, the Wolf Prize in 2000 and the ina ...

, or

Alain Connes Alain Connes (; born 1 April 1947) is a French mathematician, and a theoretical physicist, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He is a professor at the , , Ohio State University and Vande ...

. Some Peccot lectures may additionally be granted – exceptionally and irregularly – the Peccot prize or the Peccot–Vimont prize.

History

The Peccot lectures are among several manifestations organized at the Collège de France which are funded and managed by bequests from the family of Claude-Antoine Peccot, a young mathematician who died while aged 20. Several successive donations to the foundation (in 1886, 1894, and 1897) by Julie Anne Antoinette Peccot and Claudine Henriette Marguerite Lafond (widow Vimont) – respectively the mother and the godmother of Claude-Antoine Peccot – first allowed to create annual stipend, followed by annual lectureship appointments, awarded to mathematicians under 30 who have proved promising. Since 1918, the Peccot lectures have been enlarged to two or three mathematicians each year.

Laureates

Laureates of the Peccot lecture and prize who subsequently obtained the Fields medal

: Peccot lecture and prize 1945–1946, Fields medal 1950 *

: Peccot lecture and prize 1954–1955, Fields medal 1954 * Alexandre Grothendieck: Peccot lecture 1957–1958, Fields medal 1966 *

Pierre Deligne Pierre René, Viscount Deligne (; born 3 October 1944) is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoord Pr ...

: Peccot lecture 1971–1972, Fields medal 1978 *

: Peccot lecture and prize 1975–76, Fields medal 1982 *

Pierre-Louis Lions Pierre-Louis Lions (; born 11 August 1956) is a French people, French mathematician. He is known for a number of contributions to the fields of partial differential equations and the calculus of variations. He was a recipient of the 1994 Fields Me ...

: Peccot lecture 1983–1984, Fields medal 1994 *

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (29 May 1957 – 3 September 2016) was a French mathematician. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1994, for his work on dynamical systems. Biography Yoccoz attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, during which time he was a silv ...

: Peccot lecture 1987–1988, Fields medal 1994 *

Laurent Lafforgue Laurent Lafforgue (; born 6 November 1966) is a French mathematician. He has made outstanding contributions to Langlands' program in the fields of number theory and analysis, and in particular proved the Langlands conjectures for the automorphism ...

: Peccot lecture and prize 1995–1996, Fields medal 2002 *

Wendelin Werner Wendelin Werner (born 23 September 1968) is a German-born French mathematician working on random processes such as self-avoiding random walks, Brownian motion, Schramm–Loewner evolution, and related theories in probability theory and mathematica ...

: Peccot lecture 1998–1999, Fields medal 2006 *

Cédric Villani Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani (; born 5 October 1973) is a French politician and mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010, and he w ...

: Peccot lecture and prize 2002–2003, Fields medal 2010 *

Artur Avila Artur Avila Cordeiro de Melo (born 29 June 1979) is a Brazilian and naturalized French mathematician working primarily in the fields of dynamical systems and spectral theory. He is one of the winners of the 2014 Fields Medal, being the first La ...

: Peccot lecture 2004–2005, Fields medal 2014 *

Alessio Figalli Alessio Figalli (; born 2 April 1984) is an Italian mathematician working primarily on calculus of variations and partial differential equations. He was awarded the Prix and in 2012, the EMS Prize in 2012, the Stampacchia Medal in 2015, the ...

: Peccot lecture 2011–2012, Fields medal 2018 *

Peter Scholze Peter Scholze (; born 11 December 1987) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry. He has been a professor at the University of Bonn since 2012 and director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics since 2018. He ha ...

: Peccot lecture and prize 2012–2013, Fields medal 2018 *

Hugo Duminil-Copin Hugo Duminil-Copin (born 26 August 1985) is a French mathematician specializing in probability theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022. Biography The son of a middle school sports teacher and a former female dancer who became a primary ...

: Peccot lecture 2014–2015, Fields medal 2022

All Peccot lectures

References

{{Reflist Collège de France Awards with age limits Early career awards Mathematics awards

History

Laureates

Laureates of the Peccot lecture and prize who subsequently obtained the Fields medal

All Peccot lectures

See also

References