Person: Lelong, Pierre
Pierre Lelong was a French mathematician who worked in the theory of several complex variables.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Lelong attended schools in Paris, in particular the Lycée Buffon.
- This was the first time that Lelong had heard about this prestigious competition.
- One of the prize winners was Georges Pompidou, the future President of France, who would go on to become Lelong's friend.
- In the following year, 1928, Lelong was put forward by his school for the mathematics competition of the Concours Général.
- Not only did Lelong win the first prize in mathematics in the Concours Général in 1928, he also won the first prize in mathematics in 1929.
- Having prepared to take the entrance examinations for the Grand Écoles at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Lelong entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1931.
- Lelong attended lectures by Arnaud Denjoy and Paul Montel and graduated in 1934.
- After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure, Lelong began undertaking research advised by Paul Montel.
- In the first of these, Lelong investigates the accuracy of the estimate of the number of direct critical points of the inverse of a meromorphic function w(z)w(z)w(z) given by Lars Ahlfors in a 1932 paper.
- Lelong became a researcher at the CRNS from its founding.
- In 1941 Lelong submitted his Thèse de Doctorat d'État entitled Sur quelques problèmes de la théorie des fonctions de deux variables complexes Ⓣ(On some problems of the theory of the functions of two complex variables) to the Faculty of Science in Paris for the degree of docteur es sciences mathématiques.
- Even before the award of his Doctorat d'État, Lelong had been appointed as an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences of Paris in 1940.
- Lelong was appointed to Lille to fill the vacant chair of rational and experimental mechanics.
- Here is an example of a problem of rational mechanics taught in Lille, about 1954, by Pierre Lelong and Robert Bossut, at the time when Yves Leroy was a student: A 'gouttière' rotates uniformly around its centre of gravity, a ball circulates in its axis, give the movement of the ball.
- After her marriage she published under the name France Lelong.
- In 1954 Lelong left Lille and returned to Paris where he was appointed as a professor at the Faculty of Science.
- Lelong soon became involved with the French government.
- The day de Gaulle was appointed he made Pierre Lelong 'Conseiller technique au Secrétariat général de la Présidence de la République'.
- This meant that Lelong was responsible for scientific research, all levels of education and public health.
- We now look briefly at some of the books that Lelong wrote.
- We gave information above about Lelong's work for the government in the first half of the 1960s.
- Pompidou gave Lelong the task of preparing a budget for all research in the whole of France.
Born 14 March 1912, Paris, France. Died 12 October 2011, Paris, France.
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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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
