Georges Henri Halphen

Georges Henri Halphen

George Henri Halphen (30 October 1844, Rouen – 23 May 1889, Versailles) was a French mathematician. He did his studies at École Polytechnique (X 1862). He was known for his work in geometry, particularly in enumerative geometry and the singularity theory of algebraic curves, in algebraic geometry. He also worked on invariant theory and projective differential geometry.

He received in the Steiner prize of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1880 along with Max Noether. In 1881 Halphen received the grand prize of the Académie des sciences for his work on linear differential equations Mémoire sur la Reduction des Equations Différentielles Linéaires aux Formes Intégrales. He received the prix Poncelet in 1884 and the prix d'Ormoy in 1885. He was elected to the Académie des sciences in 1886 in the Section de Géométrie, replacing the deceased Jean-Claude Bouquet. In 1887 Halphen was elected to the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

In 1872 he married Rose Marguerite Aron, with whom he had eight children, four sons and four daughters. Of the four sons, three joined the military and two of them died in WWI. One of his grand-sons was Étienne Halphen (1911–1954), who did significant work in applied statistics.