Jean-Louis Nicolas is a French
number theorist.
He is the namesake (with
Paul Erdős
Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...
) of the
Erdős–Nicolas numbers, and was a frequent co-author of Erdős, who would take over the desk of Nicolas' wife Anne-Marie (also a mathematician) whenever he would visit.
Nicolas is also known for his research on
integer partition
In number theory and combinatorics, a partition of a non-negative integer , also called an integer partition, is a way of writing as a summation, sum of positive integers. Two sums that differ only in the order of their summands are considered ...
s,
[.] and for his unusual proof that there exist infinitely many ''n'' for which
:
where
is
Euler's totient function
In number theory, Euler's totient function counts the positive integers up to a given integer that are relatively prime to . It is written using the Greek letter phi as \varphi(n) or \phi(n), and may also be called Euler's phi function. In ot ...
and γ is
Euler's constant: he proved this bound unconditionally by providing two different proofs, one in the case that the
Riemann hypothesis
In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part . Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure ...
holds and another in the case that it fails.
Nicolas earned his Ph.D. in 1968 as a student of
Charles Pisot. He works at
Claude Bernard University Lyon 1
Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 (, UCBL) is one of the three public universities of Lyon, France. It is named after the French physiologist Claude Bernard and specialises in science and technology, medicine, and sports science. It was establis ...
.
A conference in honor of Nicolas' 60th birthday was held on January 14–19, 2002 at the
Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques in
Marseille
Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...
. The proceedings of the conference were published as a
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
in ''The Ramanujan Journal''.
[.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicolas, Jean-Marie
20th-century French mathematicians
21st-century French mathematicians
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
French number theorists
Academic staff of the University of Lyon