Lucien Birgé (born 1950 in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

) is 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 ...

Education and career

Lucien Birgé studied from 1970 to 1974 at 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 ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He then became an assistant at the

Pierre and Marie Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University ( , UPMC), also known as Paris VI, was a public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussieu Campus in the Latin Quarter of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, ...

(Paris 6). In 1980 he received his doctorate from the

Paris Diderot University Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (), was a French university located in Paris, France. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 1970. Paris Diderot merged with Pari ...

(Paris 7). The following year he became a professor at the

Paris Nanterre University Paris Nanterre University (), formerly University of Paris West, Paris-X and commonly referred to as Nanterre, is a public research university based in Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, France, in the Paris metropolitan area. It is one of the most pres ...

. Since 1990 he has been a professor at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie. Birgé works in the field of mathematical statistics. His research deals with parametric and nonparametric statistics, model selection, adaptation, approximation, "dimension and metric entropy", and "asymptotic optimality of estimators in infinite-dimensional spaces". In 2005 he received the

Brouwer Medal The Brouwer Medal is a triennial award presented by the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The Brouwer Metal gets its name from Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer and is the Netherlands’ most prestigi ...

of the Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap for the ''diepte, originaliteit en elegantie van zijn werk op het gebied van de mathematische statistiek'' (depth, originality and elegance of his work in the field of mathematical statistics). He is also an Honored Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

(IMS). In 1993 he gave one of the eight Medallion Lectures of the IMS. In 2012 Birgé received the

Sophie Germain Prize The Sophie Germain Prize (in French: ''Prix Sophie Germain'') is an annual mathematics prize awarded by the French Academy of Sciences to researchers who have carried out fundamental research in mathematics. The award has been conferred every year ...

Selected publications

* Lucien Birgé: ''Approximation dans les espaces métriques et théorie de l’estimation. Inégalités de Cràmer-Chernoff et théorie asymptotique des tests.'' Dissertation, Université Paris VII, 1980

Sources

* ''Contributors.'' In: ''IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.'' volume 51, number 4, 2005, pp. 1618–1624, especially p. 1618, * Piet Groeneboom
''Lucien Birgé ontvangt Brouwerprijs 2005.''
In: ''Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde.'' 5th Series, Vol. 6, 2005, No. 2, pp. 102–103,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Birge, Lucien 1950 births Living people 20th-century French mathematicians 21st-century French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni Paris Diderot University alumni Academic staff of Pierre and Marie Curie University