ren thom

For the musician see Thom Yorke

Ren Thom (September 2, 1923 - October 25, 2002) was a French mathematician and founder of the catastrophe theory. He received the Fields Medal in 1958.

Biography

Ren Thom was born in Montbliard, France. He was educated at Lyce Saint-Louis and cole Normale Suprieure and went on to teach at Grenoble and Strasbourg. While he is most known to the public for his development of catastrophe theory between 1968 and 1972, his earlier work was on differential topology. It concerned what are now called Thom spaces, characteristic classes, cobordism theory, and the Thom transversality theorem. He then moved into singularity theory, of which catastrophe theory is just one aspect. Ren Thom died on October 25, 2002, in a small town near Paris.

Martin Weil, French Mathematician Ren Thom Dies, Washington Post, November 17 (2002), p. C10

Thom, Ren Thom, Ren Thom, Ren

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