Pierre Samuel (12 September 1921 – 23 August 2009
/ref>) was a French

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, known for his work in

commutative algebra Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideal (ring theory), ideals, and module (mathematics), modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theo ...

and its applications to

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which uses abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, to solve geometry, geometrical problems. Classically, it studies zero of a function, zeros of multivariate polynomials; th ...

. The two-volume work ''Commutative Algebra'' that he wrote with

Oscar Zariski Oscar Zariski (April 24, 1899 – July 4, 1986) was an American mathematician. The Russian-born scientist was one of the most influential algebraic geometers of the 20th century. Education Zariski was born Oscher (also transliterated as Ascher o ...

is a classic. Other books of his covered

projective geometry In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting (''p ...

and

algebraic number theory Algebraic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses the techniques of abstract algebra to study the integers, rational numbers, and their generalizations. Number-theoretic questions are expressed in terms of properties of algebraic ob ...

Early life and education

Samuel studied at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris before attending the École Normale Supérieure where he studied for his Agrégé de mathematique. He received his Master of Arts and then a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1947, under the supervision of Oscar Zariski, with a thesis "Ultrafilters and Compactification of Uniform Spaces".

Career

Samuel ran a

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

seminar during the 1960s, and became Professeur émérite at the

Université Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...

(Orsay). His lectures on unique factorization domains published by the

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a leading research Institute under the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India. It is a public deemed university located at Navy Nagar, Colaba in Mumbai. It also has a centres in ...

played a significant role in computing the

Picard group In mathematics, the Picard group of a ringed space ''X'', denoted by Pic(''X''), is the group of isomorphism classes of invertible sheaves (or line bundles) on ''X'', with the group operation being tensor product. This construction is a global ver ...

of a Zariski surface via the work of Jeffrey Lang and collaborators. The method was inspired by earlier work of

Nathan Jacobson Nathan Jacobson (October 5, 1910 – December 5, 1999) was an American mathematician. Biography Born Nachman Arbiser in Warsaw, Jacobson emigrated to America with his family in 1918. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1930 and was awa ...

and Pierre Cartier, another outstanding member of the

Bourbaki group Bourbaki(s) may refer to : Persons and science * Charles-Denis Bourbaki (1816–1897), French general, son of Constantin Denis Bourbaki * Colonel Constantin Denis Bourbaki (1787–1827), officer in the Greek War of Independence and serving in t ...

. Nicholas Katz related this to the concept of ''p''-curvature of a connection introduced by

Alexander Grothendieck Alexander Grothendieck, later Alexandre Grothendieck in French (; ; ; 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014), was a German-born French mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research ext ...

. He was a member of the

, and filmed some of their meetings. A French television documentary on Bourbaki broadcast some of this footage in 2000. Samuel was also active in issues of

social justice Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has of ...

, including concerns about

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

(where he was influenced by Grothendieck), and

arms control Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee wea ...

.Pierre Samuel Letter to the American Mathematical Society
/ref> He died in Paris in August 2009. His doctoral students include Lucien Szpiro and Daniel Lazard.

Awards and honors

In 1958 he was an invited speaker (''Relations d'équivalence en géométrie algébrique'') at the ICM in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

. In 1969 he won the

Lester R. Ford Award ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics. It was established by Benjamin Finkel in 1894 and is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Mathematical Association of America. It is an expositor ...

Works

* * * with Oscar Zariski: * with Oscar Zariski: * ''Anneaux factoriels'', Publicaçoes da Sociedade de Matematica de São Paulo, 1962 * * ''Écologie: détente ou cycle infernal'', Union générale d'éditions, Collection 10-18, 1973 * ''Amazones, guerrières et gaillardes'', éditions Complexe & Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1975 * ''Le nucléaire en question,'' 1980 * ''Géométrie projective'',

Presses universitaires de France Presses universitaires de France (PUF; ), founded in 1921 by Paul Angoulvent (1899–1976), is a French publishing house. Recent company history The financial and legal structure of the Presses Universitaires de France was completely restruc ...

, 1986 * ''Colloque en l'honneur de Pierre Samuel'', Mém.

Société mathématique de France Groupe Lactalis S.A. (doing business as Lactalis) is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier S.A. Lactalis is the largest dairy pr ...

(1989)

References

External links