Gustave Choquet (; 1 March 1915 – 14 November 2006) 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 ...

. Choquet was born in

Solesmes, Nord Solesmes (; Picard: ''Solinmes'') is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. Population Heraldry Education The city is home to: * the École Saint-Joseph. * the ' Institution Saint Michel: Collège and Lycée', a Catholic S ...

. His contributions include work in

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (for example, Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics ...

potential theory In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory is the study of harmonic functions. The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics when it was realized that the two fundamental forces of nature known at the time, namely g ...

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

and

measure theory In mathematics, the concept of a measure is a generalization and formalization of geometrical measures (length, area, volume) and other common notions, such as magnitude (mathematics), magnitude, mass, and probability of events. These seemingl ...

. He is known for creating the Choquet theory, the

Choquet integral A Choquet integral is a subadditive or superadditive integral created by the French mathematician Gustave Choquet in 1953. It was initially used in statistical mechanics and potential theory, but found its way into decision theory in the 1980s, ...

and the theory of capacities. He did postgraduate work 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 ...

Paris where his advisor was Arnaud Denjoy. He was Professor at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

(subsequently Paris VI) from 1940 to 1984 and was also Professor 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 ...

from 1960 to 1969. His honours and awards included being a Member of the

Académie des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

, and an Officier of the

Légion d’Honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

. His students include

Haïm Brezis Haïm Brezis (1 June 1944 – 7 July 2024) was a French mathematician, who mainly worked in functional analysis and partial differential equations. Biography Born in Riom-ès-Montagnes, Cantal, France. Brezis was the son of a Romanian immigra ...

, Gilles Godefroy, Nassif Ghoussoub, Michel L. Lapidus, and Michel Talagrand. He was married to mathematician and mathematical physicist

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (; 29 December 1923 – 11 February 2025) was a French mathematician and physicist. She made seminal contributions to the study of general relativity, by showing that the Einstein field equations can be put into the form of ...

, with whom he had a son Daniel and a daughter Geneviève. He died in Lyon in 2006.

Bibliography

*, available from Gallica. It is an historical account on the development of the theory of capacities by the founder of the theory and one of the main contributors; an English translation of the title reads as: "The birth of capacity theory: reflections on a personal experience". * Choquet, Gustave (1969), ''Lectures on Analysis'', 3 Vols., W.A. Benjamin, Inc., New York.

External links

A biography (in French)
by the

.
A short biography (in French).A commemorative section
(396kb PDF) of th
N° 111 Gazette des Mathématiciens (2007)
of the

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 ...

. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Choquet, Gustave 1915 births 2006 deaths People from Nord (French department) 20th-century French mathematicians Academic staff of the University of Paris École Normale Supérieure alumni Members of the French Academy of Sciences Officers of the Legion of Honour Bruhat family Choquet family

Bibliography

See also

External links