Jean Gaston Darboux Explained

Jean-Gaston Darboux
Birth Date:14 August 1842
Birth Place:Nîmes, France
Death Place:Paris, France
Alma Mater:Ecole Normale Supérieure (in Paris)
Thesis Title:Sur les surfaces orthogonales
Thesis Url:https://eudml.org/doc/80701
Thesis Year:1866
Doctoral Advisor:Michel Chasles
Doctoral Students:Émile Borel
Élie Cartan
Édouard Goursat
Émile Picard
Thomas Stieltjes
Gheorghe Țițeica
Stanisław Zaremba
Prizes:Sylvester Medal (1916)
ForMemRS (1902)
Poncelet Prize (1875)

Jean-Gaston Darboux FAS MIF FRS FRSE (14 August 1842 – 23 February 1917) was a French mathematician.[1]

Life

According to his birth certificate, he was born in Nîmes in France on 14 August 1842, at 1 am. However, probably due to the midnight birth, Darboux himself usually reported his own birthday as 13 August, e.g. in his filled form for Légion d'Honneur.

His parents were François Darboux, businessman of mercery, and Alix Gourdoux. The father died when Gaston was 7. His mother undertook the mercery business with great courage, and insisted that her children receive good education. Gaston had a younger brother, Louis, who taught mathematics at the Lycée Nîmes for almost his entire life.[2]

He studied at the Nîmes Lycée and the Montpellier Lycée before being accepted as the top qualifier at the École normale supérieure in 1861,[3] and received his PhD there in 1866. His thesis, written under the direction of Michel Chasles, was titled Sur les surfaces orthogonales. During his studies at the ENS, he also took lectures in Sorbonne University and Collège de France.

In 1870, he co-founded the journal Bulletin des sciences mathématiques et astronomiques, called "Darboux's Journal" by his contemporary mathematicians. The editorial board was also formed by the mathematicians Paul Émile Appell, Émile Borel, Jacques Hadamard and Amedeo Guillet, with Darboux in the role of President. The publishing house was the Henry Gauthier-Villars et Cie Éditeurs, located in Paris.[4]

In 1872, Darboux married the Beauvaisian milliner Amélie Célina Carbonnier (1848-1911), daughter of Charles Louis Carbonnier, tailor, and Marie Victorine Anastase Hènocq. He and Célina had two children, Jean-Gaston (1870-1921), who was born at the time of the Siege of Paris and later became a marine zoologist at the Faculty of Science in Marseille, and Anaïs Berthe Lucie (1873-1970).[5]

He participated in the foundation of the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles in 1880, an institute that aimed at training female educators and ran parallel to the École normale supérieure on rue d'Ulm. Its first director was Julie Favre.[6]

In 1884, Darboux was elected to the Académie des Sciences.

Darboux made several important contributions to geometry and mathematical analysis (see, for example, linear PDEs). He was a biographer of Henri Poincaré and he edited the Selected Works of Joseph Fourier.

Among his students were Émile Borel, Élie Cartan, Édouard Goursat, Émile Picard, Gheorghe Țițeica and Stanisław Zaremba.

In 1900, he was appointed the Academy's permanent secretary of its Mathematics section.

In 1902, he was elected to the Royal Society and the American Philosophical Society;[7] in 1916, he received the Sylvester Medal from the Society. In 1908, he was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome.[8] He continued to contribute to the French Bulletin des sciences mathématiques, even after 1916.

Named in his honour

There are many things named after him:

See also

References

. Joseph Fourier. Œuvres de Fourier. Gauthier-Villars. 1888–1890. Paris. 2-05-100578-8.

External links

Notes and References

  1. Eisenhart. Luther P.. Luther P. Eisenhart. Darboux's contribution to geometry. . 1918. 24. 5. 227–237. 1560051. 10.1090/s0002-9904-1918-03052-8. free.
  2. Web site: Enfance des célébrités contemporains: Gaston Darboux. March 1913.
  3. Web site: Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 2016-01-13. 2013-01-24. https://web.archive.org/web/20130124115814/http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf. dead.
  4. Book: Bulletin des sciences mathématiques. 1916. 7. French. Paris. Gauthiers et Villars Cle, Éditeurs.
  5. Roland Brasseur – Dictionnaire des professeurs de mathématiques en classe de mathématiques spéciales – 7 mai 2015 https://pdfkul.com/darboux-rb-dico-prof-spes-20150507pdf_59d309be1723dde389357150.html
  6. Biographie de Gaston Darboux by Marianne Durand at Lycée Professionnel Gaston Darboux https://www.lyc-darboux-nimes.ac-montpellier.fr/l-etablissement-en-pratique/biographie-de-gaston-darboux
  7. Web site: APS Member History. 2021-05-19. search.amphilsoc.org.
  8. Web site: ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897. International Congress of Mathematicians. 2013-08-17. 2017-11-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20171108012153/http://www.mathunion.org/db/ICM/Speakers/SortedByCongress.php. dead.
  9. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DarbouxCubic.html Darboux Cubic -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  10. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DarbouxProblem.html Darboux Problem -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  11. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoursatProblem.html Goursat Problem -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  12. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DarbouxVector.html Darboux Vector -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  13. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DarbouxsFormula.html Darboux's Formula -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  14. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Christoffel-DarbouxIdentity.html Christoffel-Darboux Identity -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  15. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Christoffel-DarbouxFormula.html Christoffel-Darboux Formula -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  16. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Euler-DarbouxEquation.html Euler-Darboux Equation -- from Wolfram MathWorld
  17. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Euler-Poisson-DarbouxEquation.html Euler-Poisson-Darboux Equation -- from Wolfram MathWorld