Étienne Halphen (27 May 1911, in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

– 11 August 1954, in

Neuilly-sur-Marne Neuilly-sur-Marne (, ) is a French commune in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, Île-de-France. It is located from the center of Paris. Geography Crossed by the river Marne. Climate Neuilly-sur-Marne has an oceanic climate (Köppen climat ...

) 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. He was known for his work in

geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

, on

probability distributions In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is a function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of possible events for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample spac ...

and

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

Biography

He was born as son of Germaine (née Weill) and

Louis Halphen Louis Sigismond Isaac Halphen (4 February 1880 in Paris – 7 October 1950 in Paris) was a French medieval specialist and the author of many important books over a long career. He was noteworthy as the editor of a modern edition of the famous class ...

, a professor of history at Sorbonne, and grandson of

Georges Henri Halphen Georges-Henri Halphen (; 30 October 1844, Rouen – 23 May 1889, Versailles) was a French mathematician. He was known for his work in geometry, particularly in enumerative geometry and the singularity theory of algebraic curves, in algebraic geo ...

and Mathieu Weill, both renowned mathematicians. He did his studies at

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 ...

, where he received his ''agrégation'' in 1933. He worked as a teacher at Lycée de Sens (Yonne), where he was granted an indefinite leave of absence after a year due to health issues. From 1936 to 1940 he was member of the Research Group on Calculus of Probabilities and Mathematical Statistics. During the German occupation of France, he was banned from public service, but reinstated in 1945. During that period he was invited by Pierre Massé to join a statistics research group on hydrology at ''Societe hydro-technique de France'' (SHF). With the creation of

Électricité de France Électricité de France SA (; ), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational corporation, multinational electric utility company owned by the government of France. Headquartered in Paris, with €139.7 billion in sales in 2023, EDF ope ...

in 1946, Étienne Halphen and his group including

Lucien Le Cam Lucien Marie Le Cam (November 18, 1924 – April 25, 2000) was a mathematician and statistician. Biography Le Cam was born November 18, 1924, in Croze, France. His parents were farmers, and unable to afford higher education for him; his father d ...

and Georges Morlat were attached to the ''Service des Études et Recherches Hydrauliques.'' ervice for studies and research in hydraulics He work there until 1951, when his health problems required hospitalisation. Suffering from periods of depression, he took his life in August 1954.

Works

* 1929 Theorem on quadrics * 1938 Most independent random variable * 1939a Convergence of estimates * 1939b On covariation * 1941a Harmonic distribution and Type A law * 1941b Statistical analysis of water flow of the Rhine * 1945 Planning of electric energy production * 1946a Planning of electric energy production * 1946b On the industrial value of a waterfall * 1949 Estimation in probability and its application * 1952 Class of hypergeometric functions * 1953a Planning of electric energy production * 1953b Statistical analysis of the association of eye color with personality development Posthumously: * 1954 Characteristic intrinsic function, covering results obtained in 1938 and 1939 * 1955a Functions related to parabolic cylinder functions * 1955b Subjective probability * 1957 Properties of a discrete probability space invariant under permutation of its points An overview of Halphen's work on probability distributions is given by Georges Morlat.

Awards

Étienne Halphen received the ''Prix Montyon de Statistique'' 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 ...

'' posthumuosly in November 1954 for his work on statistical hydrology.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halphen, Étienne 1911 births 20th-century French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni 1954 suicides 1954 deaths Suicides in France

Biography

Works

Awards

See also

References