Ren?Thom

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Ren?Thom (September 2, 1923 - October 25, 2002) was a French mathematician and founder of the catastrophe theory. He received the Fields Medal in 1958.

Table of contents

1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 External links and References

Biography

Ren?Thom was born in Montb?iard, France. He was educated at Lyc? Saint-Louis and ?ole Normale Sup?ieure and went on to teach at Grenoble and Strasbourg.

While he is most known to the public for his development of catastrophe theory between 1968 and 1972 he was awarded a Fields Medal in 1958 for his earlier work on topology (which concerned characteristic classes, cobordism theory, and the Thom transversality theorem). He then moved into singularity theory, of which catastrophe theory is just one aspect.

Ren?Thom died on October 25, 2002, in a small town near Paris.

Bibliography

• Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (1972)

External links and References

• Martin Weil, French Mathematician Rene Thom Dies, Washington Post, November 17 (2002), p. C10
  • Online edition (free registration)