Léon Motchane (19 June 1900 – 17 January 1990) was a French industrialist and mathematician and the founder of the

Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques The Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS; English: Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies) is a French research institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics (also with a small theoretical biology g ...

Bures-sur-Yvette Bures-sur-Yvette (, "Bures-on- Yvette") is a commune in the Essonne department in the Île-de-France region in Northern France. It is a southern Parisian outer suburb in the Vallée de Chevreuse, with a population of 9,254 as of 2021. Geograp ...

Biography

Léon Motchane was of mixed Russian and Swiss parentage, of Jewish descent. He left

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

after the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

in 1918, emigrated to

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

and then to

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 ...

in 1924. Encouraged by the French mathematician

Paul Montel Paul Antoine Aristide Montel (29 April 1876 – 22 January 1975) was a French mathematician. He was born in Nice, France and died in Paris, France. He researched mostly on holomorphic functions in complex analysis. Montel was a student of Émile ...

, Motchane eventually received a doctorate in mathematics at age 54 under the direction of

Gustave Choquet Gustave Choquet (; 1 March 1915 – 14 November 2006) was a French mathematician. Choquet was born in Solesmes, Nord. His contributions include work in functional analysis, potential theory, topology and measure theory. He is known for creat ...

. In 1958

Cécile DeWitt-Morette Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette (21 December 1922 – 8 May 2017) was a French mathematician and physicist. She founded the Les Houches School of Physics in the French Alps. For this and her publications, she was awarded the American S ...

invited Léon Motchane to see the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

in the USA which inspired Léon Motchane to establish an institute dedicated to fundamental research in three areas: mathematics, theoretical physics, and the methodology of human sciences (the latter area never really took root at the IHÉS). By the moral support of the American physicist

Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often ...

, President of the IAS at that time, and the financial support of several major private companies he managed to create the

in 1958. It moved to its present location in Bois-Marie in

in 1962. He attended the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in August 1966 held in Moscow and accepted

Alexander Grothendieck Alexander Grothendieck, later Alexandre Grothendieck in French (; ; ; 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014), was a German-born French mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research ext ...

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 Mathematicians, International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place e ...

on his behalf as Grothendieck boycotted the Congress to protest over the treatment of the dissident writers. Motchane remained the IHÉS director from 1958 until he retired in 1971 when, the Dutch mathematician

Nicolaas Kuiper Nicolaas Hendrik Kuiper (; 28 June 1920 – 12 December 1994) was a Dutch mathematician, known for Kuiper's test and proving Kuiper's theorem. He also contributed to the Nash embedding theorem. Kuiper studied at University of Leiden in 1937- ...

, took over as the director of IHÉS. One of Motchane's sons, Didier, became a politician.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Motchane, Leon 1900 births 1990 deaths Russian Jews 20th-century French mathematicians Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France Russian people of Swiss descent 20th-century French physicists