Pierre Cartier Has Died
lemonde.fr
lemonde.fr
> Mathematician Pierre Cartier, 92, died on August 17 in Marcoussis (Essonne). Though he never won the Fields Medal or the Abel Prize, the most famous awards in the discipline, nor was he ever appointed to the Academy of Sciences (he refused his election), this voluble and talkative scientist nevertheless marked his field in another way.
> Between 1955 and 1983, he was one of the pillars of the Bourbaki group, a semi-secret assembly of mathematicians born in 1934 to rebuild the discipline and unify it. “It was Bourbaki’s great period. Books published then are still very current," believes Frédéric Patras, research director at the CNRS at the University of Côte d'Azur, a student of Cartier. "He was the incarnation of Bourbaki." Pierre Cartier had estimated that he devoted a third of his time to this activity in the service of the community, writing or correcting nearly 200 pages per year.
> Endowed with a great memory, he thought he was the only one to have the overview of dozens of published works. His commitment went so far as to want to self-dissolve the group, fifty years after its birth, arguing that the same age limit should be applied to the collective as to its members. The group survived its departure and continues to publish texts, but with less echo than during this prosperous period.
> “My method is my character”
> Pierre Cartier also holds the “record” for presentations at the “Bourbaki seminar” during which the speaker summarizes for specialists the progress of various branches of mathematics. The archives list 40 between 1953 and 2012. This number testifies to the great culture of mathematics, which is also its strength. His career began in algebraic geometry, the art of relating geometric shapes to functions describing them, and continued in group theory, a key concept for describing structures underlying various abstractions. In these fields, concepts still used bear his name, such as divisors or Cartier operations.
Why start with "here's all the highest accolades this person failed to achieve"? (It's fair game to mention them, but starting with them seems odd.)
it would be pretty cool to become so great in a field, that it's easier to list all the reasons you _haven't_ revolutionized it
<< This talkative and highly cultured scientist passed away on August 17th in Marcoussis at the age of 92. A cornerstone of the Bourbaki group from 1955 to 1983, he left a significant mark on his field. "He was the embodiment of Bourbaki," says Frédéric Patras, research director at CNRS. >>
(We might quibble about the translation, my french isn't the best.)
And then it says that despite not achieving these objectives, etc.
I do want to say, as someone who has never studied French, it is shockingly easy for a native English speaker to pull up a French article, especially one touching math or science, and read enough to get the gist[0]. I highly recommend the curious to just attempt reading the article in French, and then come back and check your understanding against this machine translation. You'll be surprised how much you understand.
[0] Probably because especially in the academic disciplines French and English have so many cognates, and even the jargon words are often cognate. E.g. the French word for a set (in mathematics) is "ensemble".