Michel Hénon (enɔ̃; 23 July 1931, Paris – 7 April 2013, Nice) was a French mathematician and astronomer. He worked for a long time at the Nice Observatory.
In astronomy, Hénon is well known for his contributions to stellar dynamics. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he made important contributions on the dynamical evolution of star clusters, in particular globular clusters. He developed a numerical technique using Monte Carlo methods to follow the dynamical evolution of a spherical star cluster much faster than the so-called n-body methods.
In mathematics, he is well known for the Hénon map, a simple discrete dynamical system that exhibits chaotic behavior.
He published a two-volume work on the restricted three-body problem.
In 1978 he was awarded the Prix Jean Ricard.
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In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a pipe, the random motion of particles in the air, and the number of fish each springtime in a lake. The most general definition unifies several concepts in mathematics such as ordinary differential equations and ergodic theory by allowing different choices of the space and how time is measured.
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities. Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.