Person: Pérès, Joseph
Joseph Pérès was a French mathematician who worked in rational mechanics. He was one of the founders of IHES.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Jean Pérès was the author of the book L'Art et le Réel, Essai de méta-physique fondée sur l'esthétique Ⓣ(Art and the Real, Essay on meta-physics based on aesthetics) (1898) and of several papers on philosophy.
- After one year of preparation at this Lycée, Joseph sat the entrance examinations for the École Normale Supérieure and the École Polytechnique.
- At the École Normale Supérieure, the professors who had the most influence on Pérès were Ernest Vessiot, Émile Borel and Jacques Hadamard.
- Pérès graduated with his agrégé in mathematics in 1911 and was awarded a scholarship to support him while he undertook research for his doctorate.
- After Pérès returned to France from Italy, he taught at the Lycée at Montpellier and he was there when he submitted his thesis Sur les fonctions permutable do Volterra Ⓣ(On the permutable functions of Volterra) on 30 January 1915 to the Faculty of Sciences in Paris for the degree of Doctor of Mathematical Sciences.
- Pérès was examined in May 1915 by three examiners, Émile Borel (President), Ernest Vessiot and Jacques Hadamard.
- Pérès taught at Montpellier until 1919, then at Toulouse from 1919 to 1920.
- It was at Marseilles that Pérès's son, Jean-Marie Pérès, attended the Lycée Thiers and the Lycée Saint-Charles.
- Despite this setback, Jean-Marie Pérès went on to become an outstanding zoologist and marine ecologist.
- At Marseilles, Pérès founded an institute of fluid mechanics in 1930.
- In addition to experimental work on propeller blades in the new low-turbulence wind tunnel facility, Pérès hoped to extend to three dimensions the analog voltage and current equivalent measurements that are analogous to speed voltages in incompressible fluids surrounding subsonic aircraft in motion.
- Malavard was awarded a Master's Degree from the University of Marseille in 1930 and then started research for a PhD supervised by Pérès.
- When Pérès moved to Paris in 1932, Malavard moved with him and in 1934 was awarded a diploma in aeronautical engineering.
- Pérès' work on analysis and mechanics was always influenced by Volterra, extending results of Volterra's on integral equations.
- A joint collaboration between Pérès and Volterra led to the first volume of Theorie generale des fonctionnelles Ⓣ(General theory of functionals) published in 1936.
- Pérès's other books are Les sciences exactes Ⓣ(The exact sciences) (1930), Cours de mécanique des fluides Ⓣ(Course of fluid mechanics) (1936); (with Lucien Malavard and Lucien Romani)Tables numériques pour le calcul de la répartition des charges aérodynamiques suivant l'envergure d'une aile Ⓣ(Numerical tables for the calculation of the distribution of aerodynamic loads according to the span of a wing) (1936), and Mécanique générale Ⓣ(Mechanical engineering) (1953).
- After looking at the mathematics transmitted to Europe in the 15th century, Pérès then looks at progress made up to the time of Isaac Newton.
- The next chapter considers the period from Newton to Euler, followed by a chapter covering the period from 1780 to 1860 where Pérès looks at the contributions of Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Cauchy, Galois, Gauss, Jacobi, Riemann, and Weierstrass.
- We have said that this historical work is surprising given the great range of other research topics which interested Pérès at this time.
- However, those who knew Pérès would not have found it surprising since he was a very firm believer that understanding the history of mathematics was a great asset in undertaking research on other mathematical topics.
- The analysis which Pérès and Volterra studied proved important in developing ideas of mathematical physics rather than making breakthroughs in analysis itself and Pérès made good use of it in his applications.
- Pérès died on 12 February 1962 at the age of 71.
- Henri Villat, who had been his teacher, colleague and friend, delivered 'Notice nécrologique sur Joseph Pérès' to the Paris Academy of Sciences on 26 February 1962.
Born 31 October 1890, Clermont-Ferrand, France. Died 12 February 1962, Paris, France.
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
