| Jean Cerf | |
| Nationality: | French |
| Field: | Mathematics |
| Work Institutions: | University of Lille University of Paris XI |
| Alma Mater: | École Normale Supérieure |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Henri Cartan |
| Doctoral Students: | Alain Chenciner |
| Known For: | Cerf theory Pseudoisotopy theorem |
| Prizes: | prix Servant (1970) |
Jean Cerf (born 1928) is a French mathematician, specializing in topology.
Jean Cerf was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1928. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure, graduating in sciences in 1947. After passing his agrégation in mathematics in 1950, he obtained a doctorate with thesis supervised by Henri Cartan. Cerf became a maître de conférences at the University of Lille and was later appointed a professor at the University of Paris XI. He was also a director of research at CNRS.[1]
Cerf's research deals with differential topology, cobordism, and symplectic topology. In 1966 he was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in Moscow.[2] In 1968 Cerf proved that every orientation-preserving diffeomorphism of S3
is isotopic to the identity.[3] In 1970 Cerf proved the pseudo-isotopy theory for simply connected manifolds. In 1970 he was awarded the prix Servant, together with Bernard Malgrange and André Néron (for independent work). 1971 he was the president of the Société Mathématique de France.