Émile Borel | |
|---|---|
 Émile Borel (1932) | |
| Minister of the Navy | |
| In office 17 April 1925 – 28 November 1925 | |
| Prime Minister | Paul Painlevé |
| Preceded by | Jacques-Louis Dumesnil |
| Succeeded by | Georges Leygues |
| Member of theChamber of Deputies | |
| In office 15 June 1924 – 4 June 1936 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (1871-01-07)7 January 1871 |
| Died | 3 February 1956(1956-02-03) (aged 85) |
| Nationality | French |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater | École normale supérieure Paris |
| Known for | Measure theory Probability theory Heine–Borel theorem |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Paris |
| Thesis | Sur quelques points de la théorie des fonctions (1893) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gaston Darboux |
| Doctoral students | |
Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (French:[bɔʁɛl]; 7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956)[1] was aFrenchmathematician[2] andpolitician. As a mathematician, he was known for his founding work in the areas ofmeasure theory andprobability.
Borel was born inSaint-Affrique,Aveyron, the son of aProtestant pastor.[3] He studied at theCollège Sainte-Barbe andLycée Louis-le-Grand before applying to both theÉcole normale supérieure and theÉcole Polytechnique. He qualified in the first position for both and chose to attend the former institution in 1889. That year he also won theconcours général, an annual national mathematics competition. After graduating in 1892, he placed first in theagrégation, a competitive civil service examination leading to the position of professeur agrégé. His thesis, published in 1893, was titledSur quelques points de la théorie des fonctions ("On some points in the theory of functions"). That year, Borel started a four-year stint as a lecturer at theUniversity of Lille, during which time he published 22 research papers. He returned to the École normale supérieure in 1897, and was appointed to the chair of theory of functions, which he held until 1941.[4]
In 1901, Borel married 17-year-old Marguerite, the daughter of colleaguePaul Émile Appel; she later wrote more than 30 novels under the pseudonymCamille Marbo. Émile Borel died in Paris on 3 February 1956.[4]
Along withRené-Louis Baire andHenri Lebesgue, Émile Borel was among the pioneers ofmeasure theory and its application toprobability theory. The concept of aBorel set is named in his honor. One of his books on probability introduced the amusingthought experiment that entered popular culture under the nameinfinite monkey theorem or the like. He also published a series of papers (1921–1927) that first definedgames of strategy.[5] John von Neumann objected to this assignment of priority in a letter toEconometrica published in 1953 where he asserted that Borel could not have defined games of strategy because he rejected the minimax theorem.[6]
With the development ofstatistical hypothesis testing in the early 1900s various tests forrandomness were proposed. Sometimes these were claimed to have some kind of general significance, but mostly they were just viewed as simple practical methods. In 1909, Borel formulated the notion that numbers picked randomly on the basis of their value arealmost alwaysnormal, and with explicit constructions in terms of digits, it is quite straightforward to get numbers that are normal.[7]
In 1913 and 1914 he bridged the gap betweenhyperbolic geometry andspecial relativity with expository work. For instance, his bookIntroduction Géométrique à quelques Théories Physiques[8] describedhyperbolic rotations as transformations that leave a hyperbolastable just as a circle around a rotational center is stable.
In 1915 he was appointed head of the technical cabinet for the newly formedDirectorate of Inventions for National Defense which aimed to coordinate French laboratories for the war effort in theFirst World War.
In 1922, he founded theParis Institute of Statistics, the oldest French school for statistics; then in 1928 he co-founded theInstitut Henri Poincaré in Paris.
In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, he was active in politics. From 1924 to 1936, he was a member of theChamber of Deputies.[9] In 1925, he wasMinister of the Navy in the cabinet of fellow mathematicianPaul Painlevé. During theSecond World War, he was a member of theFrench Resistance.
Besides theCentre Émile Borel at theInstitut Henri Poincaré in Parisand acrater on the Moon, the following mathematical notions are named after him:
Borel also described apoker model that he coinsLa Relance in his 1938 bookApplications de la théorie des probabilités aux Jeux de Hasard.[10]
Borel was awarded theResistance Medal in 1950.[4]
Quotations related toÉmile Borel at Wikiquote
FrenchWikisource has original text related to this article:Auteur:Émile Borel
Media related toÉmile Borel (mathematician) at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Minister of the Navy April 17, 1925 – November 28, 1925 | Succeeded by |
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