The faces of mathematics in Geneva
Gabriel Cramer (1704-1752) shares with Jean-Louis Calendrini (1703-1758) the chair of mathematics at the University of Geneva at its creation. Cramer remains famous for his work Introduction to Algebraic Curved Line Analysis (1750), in which he studied and classified curves using algebra.
Louis Bertrand (1731–1812) was a student of Leonhard Euler. His best known work is New development of the elementary part of mathematics taken in its entirety, published in two volumes in Geneva in 1778.
Student of Louis Bertrand, Simon L’Huilier (1750–1840) won the prize of the Mathematics Section of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for a dissertation on the principles of infinitesimal calculus. In addition to infinitesimal calculus, his contributions mainly concern probability and the construction of polyhedra.
Appointed in 1848, Gabriel Oltramare (1816–1906) held the chair of higher mathematics until 1900. Specializing in the theory of numbers and analysis, he devoted himself to a theory that he invented and called “generalization calculus”.
A year before succeeding Oltramare, Henri Fehr (1870–1954) founded, in 1899, with Charles-Ange Laisant the magazine Mathematics Education (1899) which he directed for more than fifty years and which is still published today in Geneva. Fehr is also co-founder of the Swiss Mathematical Society (1910) and has continued, throughout his career, to work for the collective good.
Rolin Wavre (1896–1949) defended his thesis at the University of Geneva in 1921 before being appointed professor there in 1924. Henri Fehr emphasizes that his work “denotes a rare depth of mind and an extraordinary power of abstraction”.
Born in Russia, Dmitry Mirimanoff (1861–[1945)settledinFranceattheageof19forhisstudiesInParishetooklessonsfromPicardAppellHermiteandPoincaréThenhedecidedtocometoGenevabecameaSwissnaturalizedcitizenanddefendedhisthesisin1900HetaughtattheUniversitythefollowingyear(GenevaLausanneandFribourg)anduntil1936Hisworkcoveredavastfield:Fermat’slasttheoremantinomiesofsettheorygeometryprobabilitycalculationetc
Georges de Rham (1903–1990) was born in Roche, in the canton of Vaud. After classical studies, he considered devoting himself to philosophy but opted for chemistry, physics and biology which he finally abandoned in favor of mathematics at the University of Lausanne. The results contained in his thesis immediately gave him international fame. He taught at the University of Geneva from 1936. His work covered topology, functional analysis and differential geometry.
Born in Serbia, Jovan Karamata (1902-1967) was sent by his parents to Lausanne at the start of the First World War. When the war ended, he returned to Belgrade where he obtained his doctorate in 1926, participating in the founding of the Institute of Mathematics of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. Appointed professor at the University of Geneva in 1951, he is the author of around a hundred articles and several books devoted to mathematical analysis.
Michel Kervaire (1927–2007) studied mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, then completed his thesis under the supervision of Heinz Hopf, which he defended in 1955. He was appointed professor at UNIGE in 1971. His collaborations with John Milnor, his results in algebra or combinatorics as well as the study of higher dimensional nodes of which he is the originator are among the jewels of Genevan mathematics.
André Haefliger (1929–2023) studies mathematics at the University of Lausanne with the idea of becoming a teacher. He was appointed professor at the University of Geneva in 1962. Haefliger contributed considerably to the reputation of the Mathematics Section through his work and his influence on numerous researchers. A specialist in topology and in particular the theory of foliations, he was also a violinist.
Vaughan Jones was born in December 1952 in Gisborne, New Zealand. After a doctorate at the Mathematics Section of the University of Geneva under the direction of André Haefliger, he received the Fields Medal in 1990 for his research in the field of knot theory, in particular thanks to his discovery of the polynomial of Jones, polynomial knot invariant.
Stanislav Smirnov was born in 1970 in Leningrad (Russia). He was appointed professor at the University of Geneva in 2003 and was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010 for his proof of the conformal invariance of the percolation model and the Ising model in statistical physics.
Martin Hairer was born on November 14, 1975 in Geneva. He studied at the University of Geneva where he obtained a doctorate under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Eckmann. He is currently a professor at Imperial College London and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. In 2014, he received the Fields Medal for his work on stochastic partial differential equations as well as stochastic processes or Markov processes.
Hugo Duminil-Copin was born in 1985 in Châtenay-Malabry (France). He obtained his doctorate from the Mathematics Section of UNIGE under the supervision of Stanislav Smirnov. He was then hired at the University of Geneva as a professor. Since 2016, he has also been a permanent professor at the Paris-Saclay Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies. His work in statistical physics on the Ising model earned him the Fields Medal in 2022.
