Bernadette Perrin-Riou (born 1 August 1955) is a French number theorist.
Perrin-Riou was born on 1 August 1955 in Les Vans, Ardèche, France. Her parents had both had a scientific education;[1] her mother and father were a physicist and chemist, respectively. She was brought up, along with her sisters, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.[2] [3]
She entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles in 1974, completing her undergraduate work in 1977.She then took a research assistant position at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.[3] She received an advanced degree from University of Paris-Sud in 1979, working with Georges Poitou;[2] she then obtained a doctoral degree from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1983. Her thesis advisor was John H. Coates, and her thesis was entitled "French: Arithmetique des courbes elliptiques et théorie d'Iwasawa" ("Arithmetic of elliptic curves and Iwasawa theory").[3]
She became French: [[maître de conferences]] at UPMC in 1983, and was then invited to spend a year as a visiting professor at Harvard University; she subsequently became a professor at the same university.[3]
In 1994 she moved to a position at University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, which was primarily a research position (that is, with few teaching requirements).[2] In the same year, she was invited to give an address at the International Congress of Mathematicians, which was held in Zürich,[3] which she gave on "French: Fonctions L p-French: adiques" ("p-adic L-functions").[4]
Perrin-Riou's research is in number theory, concentrating on p-adic L-functions and Iwasawa theory.[1]
She was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics prize in 1999, a prize established in 1990 for women in maths.[1]