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Georges de Rham
Summary
Georges de Rham (dəʁam; 10 September 1903 – 9 October 1990) was a Swiss mathematician, known for his contributions to differential topology.
Georges de Rham was born on 10 September 1903 in Roche, a small village in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. He was the fifth born of the six children in the family of Léon de Rham, a constructions engineer. Georges de Rham grew up in Roche but went to school in nearby Aigle, the main town of the district, travelling daily by train. By his own account, he was not an extraordinary student in school, where he mainly enjoyed painting and dreamed of becoming a painter. In 1919 he moved with his family to Lausanne in a rented apartment in Beaulieu Castle, where he would live for the rest of his life. Georges de Rham started the Gymnasium in Lausanne with a focus on humanities, following his passion for literature and philosophy but learning little mathematics. On graduating from the Gymnasium in 1921 however, he decided not to continue with the Faculty of Letters in order to avoid Latin. He opted instead for the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lausanne. At the faculty he started out studying biology, physics and chemistry and no mathematics initially. While trying to learn some mathematics by himself as a tool for physics, his interest was raised and by the third year he abandoned biology to focus decisively on mathematics.
At the University he was mainly influenced by two professors, Gustave Dumas and Dmitry Mirimanoff, who guided him in studying the works of Émile Borel, René-Louis Baire, Henri Lebesgue, and Joseph Serret. After graduating in 1925, de Rham remained at the University of Lausanne as an assistant to Dumas. Starting work towards completing his doctorate, he read the works of Henri Poincaré on topology on the advice of Dumas. Although he found inspiration for a thesis subject in Poincaré, progress was slow as topology was a relatively new topic and access to the relevant literature was difficult in Lausanne.
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