René Thom

René Frédéric Thom (ʁəne tɔm; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958. He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he became world-famous among the wider academic community and the educated general public for one aspect of this latter interest, his work as founder of catastrophe theory (later developed by Christopher Zeeman). René Thom grow up in a modest family in Montbéliard, Doubs and obtained a Baccalauréat in 1940. After German invasion of France, his family took refuge in Switzerland and then in Lyon. In 1941 he moved to Paris to attend Lycée Saint-Louis and in 1943 he began studying mathematics at École Normale Supérieure, becoming agrégé in 1946. He received his PhD in 1951 from the University of Paris. His thesis, titled Espaces fibrés en sphères et carrés de Steenrod (Sphere bundles and Steenrod squares), was written under the direction of Henri Cartan. After a fellowship at Princeton University Graduate College (1951-1952), he became Maître de conférences at the Universities of Grenoble (1953–1954) and Strasbourg (1954–1963), where he was appointed Professor in 1957. In 1964 he moved to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, in Bures-sur-Yvette, where he worked until 1990. In 1958 Thom received the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh for the foundations of cobordism theory, which were already present in his thesis. He was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians two more times: in 1970 in Nice and 1983 in Warsaw (which he did not attend). He was awarded the Brouwer Medal in 1970, the Grand Prix Scientifique de la Ville de Paris in 1974, and the John von Neumann Lecture Prize in 1976. He become the first president, together with Louis Néel, of the newly established Fondation Louis-de-Broglie In 1973 and was elected Member of the Académie des Sciences of Paris in 1976.