Élie Cartan
Élie Cartan | |
|---|---|
Professor Élie Joseph Cartan | |
| Born | 9 April 1869 Dolomieu, Isère, France |
| Died | 6 May 1951 (aged 82) Paris, France |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Known for | Lie groups (Cartan's theorem) Vector spaces and exterior algebra Differential geometry Special and general relativity Differential forms Quantum mechanics (spinors, rotating vectors) List of things named after Élie Cartan |
| Children | Henri Cartan |
| Relatives | Anna Cartan (sister) |
| Awards | Leconte Prize (1930) Lobachevsky Prize (1937) President of the French Academy of Sciences (1946) Fellow of the Royal Society (1947) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics and physics |
| Institutions | University of Paris École Normale Supérieure |
| Thesis | Sur la structure des groupes de transformations finis et continus (1894) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gaston Darboux Sophus Lie |
| Doctoral students | Charles Ehresmann Mohsen Hashtroodi Kentaro Yano |
| Other notable students | Shiing-Shen Chern |
Élie Joseph Cartan ForMemRS (French: [kaʁtɑ̃]; 9 April 1869 – 6 May 1951) was an influential French mathematician who did fundamental work in the theory of Lie groups, differential systems (coordinate-free geometric formulation of PDEs), and differential geometry. He also made significant contributions to general relativity and indirectly to quantum mechanics. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century.
His son Henri Cartan was an influential mathematician working in algebraic topology.