Charles Pisot (2 March 1910 – 7 March 1984) was a

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

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 ...

. He is chiefly recognized as one of the primary investigators of the numerical set associated with his name, the

Pisot–Vijayaraghavan number In mathematics, a Pisot–Vijayaraghavan number, also called simply a Pisot number or a PV number, is a real algebraic integer greater than 1, all of whose Galois conjugates are less than 1 in absolute value. These numbers were discovered by Axe ...

s. He followed the classical path of great French mathematicians by studying at the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

on Ulm street, where he was received first at the agrégation in 1932. He then began his academic career at the

Bordeaux University The University of Bordeaux (, ) is a public research university based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It has several campuses in the cities and towns of Bordeaux, Dax, Gradignan, Périgueux, Pessac, and Talence. There are also se ...

before being offered a chair at the Science Faculty of Paris and at the

École Polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...

. He was a member of

Bourbaki 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 the ...

. Also of interest is the recently solved Pisot conjecture on

rational function In mathematics, a rational function is any function that can be defined by a rational fraction, which is an algebraic fraction such that both the numerator and the denominator are polynomials. The coefficients of the polynomials need not be ...

s. (For a technical account and bibliography see Umberto Zannier's paper in the ''

Annals of Mathematics The ''Annals of Mathematics'' is a mathematical journal published every two months by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. History The journal was established as ''The Analyst'' in 1874 and with Joel E. Hendricks as t ...

''.) He was also the coauthor (with Marc Zamansky) of a textbook in general mathematics (titled ''Mathématiques générales'') which was very popular in the 1960s and 1970s.

References

External links

Biography
(in French) * 1910 births 1984 deaths People from Obernai Academic staff of École Polytechnique 20th-century French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni Academic staff of the University of Paris Nicolas Bourbaki {{France-mathematician-stub