Rouen
Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the region of Normandy and the department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, the population ...
– 18 December 1994,
Caen
Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
most remembered for
Apéry's theorem
In mathematics, Apéry's theorem is a result in number theory that states the Apéry's constant ζ(3) is irrational. That is, the number
:\zeta(3) = \sum_^\infty \frac = \frac + \frac + \frac + \cdots = 1.2020569\ldots
cannot be written as a fra ...
, which states that is an
irrational number
In mathematics, the irrational numbers (from in- prefix assimilated to ir- (negative prefix, privative) + rational) are all the real numbers that are not rational numbers. That is, irrational numbers cannot be expressed as the ratio of two inte ...
Rouen
Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the region of Normandy and the department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, the population ...
in 1916 to a
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
mother and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
father. His childhood was spent in
Lille
Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...
until 1926, when the family moved to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
, where he studied at the Lycée Ledru-Rollin and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He was admitted at the
École normale supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education
Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education sca ...
in 1935. His studies were interrupted at the start of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
; he was mobilized in September 1939, taken
prisoner of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of ...
in June 1940, repatriated with pleurisy in June 1941, and hospitalized until August 1941. He wrote his doctoral thesis in algebraic geometry under the direction of Paul Dubreil and René Garnier in 1947.
In 1947 Apéry was appointed Maître de conférences (lecturer) at the University of Rennes. In 1949 he was appointed Professor at the University of Caen, where he remained until his retirement.
In 1979 he published an unexpected proof of the irrationality of , which is the sum of the inverses of the cubes of the
positive integer
In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country").
Numbers used for counting are called '' cardinal ...
s. An indication of the difficulty is that the corresponding problem for other odd powers remains unsolved. Nevertheless, many mathematicians have since worked on the so-called Apéry sequences to seek alternative proofs that might apply to other odd powers ( Frits Beukers, Alfred van der Poorten, Marc Prévost, Keith Ball, Tanguy Rivoal, Wadim Zudilin, and others).
Apéry was active in politics and for a few years in the 1960s was president of the Calvados
Radical Party of the Left
The Radical Party of the Left (french: Parti radical de gauche, PRG) is a social-liberal political party in France. A party in the Radical tradition, since 1972 the PRG was a close ally of the major party of the centre-left in France, the S ...
. He abandoned politics after the reforms instituted by
Edgar Faure
Edgar Jean Faure (; 18 August 1908 – 30 March 1988) was a French politician, lawyer, essayist, historian and memoirist who served as Prime Minister of France in 1952 and again between 1955 and 1956.1968 revolt, when he realised that university life was running against the tradition he had always upheld.
Personal life
Apéry married in 1947 and had three sons, including mathematician François Apéry. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1971. He then remarried in 1972 and divorced in 1977.
In 1994, Apéry died from
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
after a long illness in
Caen
Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tombstone has a mathematical inscription stating his theorem.
:
See also
*
Apéry's constant
In mathematics, Apéry's constant is the sum of the reciprocals of the positive cubes. That is, it is defined as the number
:
\begin
\zeta(3) &= \sum_^\infty \frac \\
&= \lim_ \left(\frac + \frac + \cdots + \frac\right),
\end
...