Jean Gaston Darboux - Life

Life

Darboux made several important contributions to geometry and mathematical analysis (see, for example, linear PDEs). He was a biographer of Henri Poincaré and he edited the Selected Works of Joseph Fourier.

Darboux received his Ph.D. from the École Normale Supérieure in 1866. His thesis, written under the direction of Michel Chasles, was titled Sur les surfaces orthogonales. In 1884, Darboux was elected to the Académie des Sciences. In 1900, he was appointed the Academy's permanent secretary of its Mathematics section.

Among his students were Émile Borel, Élie Cartan, Gheorghe Ţiţeica and Stanisław Zaremba.

Darboux's contribution to the differential geometry of surfaces appears in the four volume collection of studies he published between 1887 and 1896; see links below for access to these texts.

In 1902, he was elected to the Royal Society; in 1916, he received the Sylvester Medal from the Society.

There are many things named after him:

  • Darboux equation
  • Darboux frame
  • Darboux integral
  • Darboux net invariants
  • Darboux problem
  • Darboux's theorem in symplectic geometry
  • Darboux's theorem in real analysis, related to Intermediate value theorem
  • Christoffel-Darboux identity
  • Christoffel-Darboux formula
  • Darboux's formula
  • Darboux vector
  • Euler-Darboux equation
  • Euler-Poisson-Darboux equation
  • Darboux cubic
  • Darboux or Goursat problem
  • Darboux transformation.

Read more about this topic:  Jean Gaston Darboux

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    “There are only two sorts of people in life you can trust—good Christians and good Communists.”
    —Joe Slovo (b. 1926)

    “O life unlike to ours!
    Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
    Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
    And each half lives a hundred different lives;
    Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.”
    —Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)