Jean Leray | |
|---|---|
 Jean Leray atOberwolfach in 1961 | |
| Born | (1906-11-07)7 November 1906 Chantenay-sur-Loire (today part ofNantes) |
| Died | 10 November 1998(1998-11-10) (aged 92) |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
| Known for | Partial differential equations Algebraic topology Global hyperbolicity Sheaf theory Sheaf cohomology Leray cover Leray projection Leray's theorem Leray spectral sequence Leray–Hirsch theorem Leray–Schauder degree |
| Awards | Prix Francoeur(1937) Malaxa Prize(1938) Feltrinelli Prize(1971) John von Neumann Prize(1962) Wolf Prize(1979) Lomonosov Gold Medal(1988) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Nancy University of Paris Collège de France |
| Doctoral advisor | Henri Villat |
| Doctoral students | Armand Borel István Fáry |
Jean Leray (French:[ləʁɛ]; 7 November 1906 – 10 November 1998)[1] was a Frenchmathematician, who worked on bothpartial differential equations andalgebraic topology.
He was born in Chantenay-sur-Loire (today part ofNantes). He studied atÉcole Normale Supérieure from 1926 to 1929. He received his Ph.D. in 1933. In 1934 Leray published an important paper that founded the study ofweak solutions of theNavier–Stokes equations.[2] In the same year, he andJuliusz Schauder discovered[3] a topological invariant, now called theLeray–Schauder degree, which they applied to prove the existence of solutions for partial differential equations lacking uniqueness.
From 1938 to 1939 he was professor at theUniversity of Nancy. He did not join theBourbaki group, although he was close with its founders.
His main work intopology was carried out while he was aprisoner of war in a camp inEdelbach, Austria from 1940 to 1945. He concealed his expertise on differential equations, fearing that its connections withapplied mathematics could lead him to be asked to do war work.
Leray's work of this period proved seminal to the development ofspectral sequences andsheaves.[4] These were subsequently developed by many others,[5] each separately becoming an important tool inhomological algebra.
He returned to work on partial differential equations from about 1950.
He was professor at theUniversity of Paris from 1945 to 1947, and then at theCollège de France until 1978.
He was awarded the Malaxa Prize (Romania, 1938), the Grand Prix in mathematical sciences (French Academy of Sciences, 1940), theFeltrinelli Prize (Accademia dei Lincei, 1971), theWolf Prize in Mathematics (Israel, 1979), and theLomonosov Gold Medal (Moscow, 1988). He was an elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1959 and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1965.[6][7]
