Adrien Douady (; 25 September 1935 – 2 November 2006) was a French

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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. Douady was a student of

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 ...

at the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

, and initially worked in

homological algebra Homological algebra is the branch of mathematics that studies homology in a general algebraic setting. It is a relatively young discipline, whose origins can be traced to investigations in combinatorial topology (a precursor to algebraic topolo ...

. His thesis concerned deformations of complex analytic spaces. Subsequently, he became more interested in the work of

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 analysis. The Fatou lemma and the Fatou set are named after him. Biography ...

and

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

and made significant contributions to the fields of

analytic geometry In classical mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry. Analytic geometry is used in physics and enginee ...

and

dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a ...

. Together with his former student John H. Hubbard, he launched a new subject, and a new school, studying properties of iterated quadratic complex mappings. They made important mathematical contributions in this field of complex dynamics, including a study of the

Mandelbrot set The Mandelbrot set () is the set of complex numbers c for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not diverge to infinity when iterated from z=0, i.e., for which the sequence f_c(0), f_c(f_c(0)), etc., remains bounded in absolute value. This ...

. One of their most fundamental results is that the Mandelbrot set is connected; perhaps most important is their theory of renormalization of (polynomial-like) maps. The Douady rabbit, a quadratic filled Julia set, is named after him. Douady taught at the

University of Nice A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

and was a professor at the

Paris-Sud 11 University Paris-Sud University (French: ''Université Paris-Sud''), also known as University of Paris — XI (or as Université d'Orsay before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, in ...

, Orsay. He was a member of Bourbaki. and an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in 1966 at Moscow and again in 1986 in Berkeley. He was elected to the

Académie des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des 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 research. It was at ...

in 1997, and was featured in the French animation project

Dimensions In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordin ...

. He died after diving into the cold Mediterranean from a favourite spot near his vacation home in the Var. His son,

Raphael Douady Raphael Douady (born 15 November 1959) is a French mathematician and economist. He holds the Robert Frey Endowed Chair for Quantitative Finance at Stony Brook, New York. He is a fellow of the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne (Economic Centre ...

, is also a noted mathematician and an economist.

References

External links

*http://picard.ups-tlse.fr/~cheritat/Adrien70/index.php * *http://www.math.jacobs-university.de/adrien with a guest book to share your memories
Pictures with Adrien Douady
{{DEFAULTSORT:Douady, Adrien 1935 births 2006 deaths 20th-century French mathematicians Dynamical systems theorists Academic staff of Côte d'Azur University Academic staff of Paris-Sud University École Normale Supérieure alumni Members of the French Academy of Sciences Nicolas Bourbaki People from La Tronche

See also

References

External links