Person: Tits, Jacques
Jacques Tits was a Belgium-born French mathematician who worked on group theory and geometry.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- His parents were Léon Tits, who was a professor, and Lousia André.
- Jacques attended the Athénée of Uccle and then studied at the Free University of Brussels.
- His thesis advisor in Brussels was Paul Libois, and Tits graduated with his doctorate in 1950 having submitted his dissertation Généralisation des groupes projectifs basés sur la notion de transitivité Ⓣ(Generalization of projective groups based on the notion of transitivity) .
- Tits' first papers, following the work he had undertaken for his doctoral dissertation, were on generalisations of triply transitive groups.
- In Groupes triplement transitifs et généralisations Ⓣ(Triply transitive groups and generalizations) (1950), Tits went on to look at generalisations of nnn-tuply transitive groups, defining an almost nnn-tuply transitive group.
- In Sur les groupes triplement transitifs continus; généralisation d'un théorème de Kerékjártó Ⓣ(On triply transitive continuous groups; generalization of a theorem Kerékjártó) (1951) Tits looked at triply transitive groups of transformations of a topological space using his earlier results which characterised the projective groups among triply transitive groups.
- Among Tits' doctoral students in Brussels we mention Francis Buekenhout who was awarded his doctorate in 1965.
- In 1973 Tits accepted the Chair of Group Theory at the Collège de France.
- Tits held this chair until he retired in 2000.
- The large and important mathematical developments introduced by Tits are far too numerous to cover here in any detail.
- Tits was working on the problem, as was Chevalley, who was a more established mathematician at that time.
- Chevalley succeeded in 1955, and his paper was soon followed by variations due to Steinberg, Tits, Suzuki, and Ree.
- During this time Tits was gradually developing the theory of buildings, and his book "Buildings of spherical type and finite BN-pairs" in 1974 produced a fully-fledged theory that has since found many uses.
- we mention some of Tits' early work on buildings, and we discuss the contents of his above-mentioned book concerning buildings of spherical type.
- a later approach to buildings, also due to Tits, is mentioned, and we return at the end to the construction of the exceptional groups of Lie type using building theory.
- Through a large number of other important roles, Tits played a major part in mathematical life.
- Tits has received, and continues to receive, many honours.
- After retiring in 2000, Tits became the first holder of the Vallée-Poussin Chair from the University of Louvain.
- He introduced what is now known as a Tits building, which encodes in geometric terms the algebraic structure of linear groups.
- Tits's geometric approach was essential in the study and realisation of the sporadic groups, including the Monster.
- He also established the celebrated "Tits alternative": every finitely generated linear group is either virtually solvable or contains a copy of the free group on two generators.
- The achievements of John Thompson and of Jacques Tits are of extraordinary depth and influence.
Born 12 August 1930, Uccle, Belgium. Died 5 December 2021, Paris, France.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Group Theory, Origin Belgium, Prize Wolf
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
-
- 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
