Person: Bruhat, Yvonne
Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a French mathematician and physicist who made important contributions to the general theory of relativity. She was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- For simplicity, we will use the name Yvonne Bruhat throughout this biography.
- Georges Bruhat had been ranked first in the Concours d'agrégation in physics in 1909.
- Yvonne Bruhat undertook her secondary school education in Paris.
- Georges Bruhat had been appointed as deputy director of the École Normale Supérieure in 1935 and was appointed to the chair of physics there in 1941, the previous holder of the chair having lost his position through a decision of the Vichy government.
- In 1943 Yvonne Bruhat began her studies at the École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles at Sèvres just outside Paris.
- Bruhat and Baillou were deported, and Bruhat perished at Buchenwald.
- Yvonne was in the middle of her studies when the tragedy happened.
- Berthe Bruhat, born Hubert, 1892-1972, who always encouraged me to try to understand some of the world and to pursue scientific research.
- Georges Bruhat's books include the four volume Cours de physique générale Ⓣ(A general physics course).
- Yvonne Bruhat graduated from the École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles in 1946 and undertook research advised by André Lichnerowicz.
- Of very great significance is that Yvonne Bruhat's analysis enabled her to prove rigorously for the first time local-in-time existence and uniqueness of solutions of the Einstein equations.
- Bruhat spent part of the academic year 1951-1952 and the academic year 1952-53 in the United States, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
- MathSciNet lists 241 publications by Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (some of these are under the name Yvonne Fourès-Bruhat.
- Bruhat gave courses at the University of Paris to students taking the Master of Mathematics degree which prepared them for the practical use of distributions in the partial differential equations of theoretical physics.
- Bruhat and Cecile DeWitt-Morette produced a companion volume in 1989.
- We must mention two further important books which were single-author works by Bruhat.
- For her contributions to mathematical physics, Bruhat has received many honours.
Born 29 December 1923, Lille, France.
View full biography at MacTutor
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
