About
Henri Cartan, born in Nancy in 1904 and died in Paris in 2008, was a major French mathematician of the 20th century. Son of mathematician Élie Cartan, he entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1923 and earned his doctorate in 1928. A founding member of the Nicolas Bourbaki group in 1935, he ran the famous Séminaire Henri Cartan from 1948 to 1964, which trained generations of mathematicians. His work covered functions of several complex variables, sheaf theory, algebraic topology, and potential theory. With Samuel Eilenberg, he published the foundational *Homological Algebra* in 1956. He received numerous honors, including the CNRS Gold Medal in 1976 and the Wolf Prize in 1980.
* 1904-07-08 — † 2008-08-13
Major works
- Homological Algebra (1956)mathematical treatise
Key milestones
- 1935Founding member of the Nicolas Bourbaki group.
- 1948Start of the Séminaire Henri Cartan at the École Normale Supérieure.
- 1980Awarded the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.
Themes
Functions of several complex variabSheaf theoryAlgebraic topologyPotential theoryHuman rights
Sources: academie-sciences.fr · royalsocietypublishing.org · mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk