Laurent Schwartz

Laurent Schwartz

Laurent-Moïse Schwartz (5 March 1915 – 4 July 2002) was a French mathematician. He pioneered the theory of distributions, which gives a well-defined meaning to objects such as the Dirac delta function. He was awarded the Fields medal in 1950 for his work. For a long time he taught at the École polytechnique.

Apart from his scientific work, he was a well-known outspoken intellectual, leaning towards socialism.