Pierre Bézier

Pierre Étienne Bézier (1 September 1910 – 25 November 1999; pjɛʁ etjɛn bezje) was a French engineer and one of the founders of the fields of solid, geometric and physical modelling as well as in the field of representing curves, especially in computer-aided design and manufacturing systems. As an engineer at Renault, he became a leader in the transformation of design and manufacturing, through mathematics and computing tools, into computer-aided design and three-dimensional modeling. Bézier patented and popularized the Bézier curves and Bézier surfaces that are now used in most computer-aided design and computer graphics systems. Born in Paris, Bézier was the son and grandson of engineers. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from the École nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers in 1930. He earned a second degree in electrical engineering in 1931 at the École supérieure d'électricité, and a doctorate in 1977 in mathematics from the Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University where he contributed to the study of parametric polynomial curves and their vector coefficients. From 1968 to 1979 Bézier was Professor of Production Engineering at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. He wrote four books and numerous papers, and received several distinctions including the Steven Anson Coons Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and an honorary doctorate from the Technical University Berlin. He was an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the Société Belge des Mécaniciens, president of the Société des Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, Société des Ingénieurs Arts et Metiers, and one of the first Advisory Editors of Computer-Aided Design magazine. With his family's consent, the Solid Modeling Association established The Pierre Bézier Award for Solid, Geometric and Physical Modeling and Applications in 2007. Bézier popularized but did not actually create the Bézier curve — using such curves to design automobile bodies.