Jeanne Radegonde Marie Charpentier (30 October 1903 – 9 October 1994) was a French mathematician. She was the first woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France, and the second woman, after

Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin (7 July 1905 – 19 October 1972) was a French mathematician, the second woman to obtain a doctorate in pure mathematics in France, the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France, the president o ...

, to obtain a faculty position in mathematics at a university in France. Charpentier was born in

Poitiers Poitiers (, , , ; Poitevin: ''Poetàe'') is a city on the River Clain in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and the historical centre of Poitou. In 2017 it had a population of 88,291. Its agglome ...

, the daughter of Michel Marie Eugène Charpentier and Marie Thérèse Geneviève Rondelet, on either 29 or 30 October 1903.''Vienne, France, Births, Marriages, and Deaths 1540–1906''

Education

Charpentier joined the

Société mathématique de France 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 SA. Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the sec ...

in 1930, possibly their second female member after Édmée Chandon. She was a student of

Georges Bouligand Georges Louis Bouligand (13 October 1889 – 12 April 1979) was a French mathematician. He worked in analysis, mechanics, analytical and differential geometry, topology, and mathematical physics. He is known for introducing the concept of pa ...

at the

University of Poitiers The University of Poitiers (UP; french: Université de Poitiers) is a public university located in Poitiers, France. It is a member of the Coimbra Group. It is multidisciplinary and contributes to making Poitiers the city with the highest stud ...

, where she completed her thesis in 1931 with

Paul Montel Paul Antoine Aristide Montel (29 April 1876 – 22 January 1975) was a French mathematician. He was born in Nice, France and died in Paris, France. He researched mostly on holomorphic functions in complex analysis. Montel was a student of Émile ...

as chair. Her dissertation was ''Sur les points de Peano d'une equation différentielle du premier order n the Peano points of a first-order differential equation'.

Career

Charpentier did postdoctoral studies with

George Birkhoff George David Birkhoff (March 21, 1884 – November 12, 1944) was an American mathematician best known for what is now called the ergodic theorem. Birkhoff was one of the most important leaders in American mathematics in his generation, and during ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and was an invited speaker on geometry at the 1932

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

in Zurich. However, she could not obtain a faculty position in France at that time, and instead had to support herself as a teacher at the high school level. She was appointed to her faculty position in 1942, at the

University of Rennes The University of Rennes is a public research university which will be officially reconstituted on 1 January 2023 and located in the city of Rennes, in Upper Brittany, France. The University of Rennes has been divided for almost 50 years, before ...

, became full professor there, and retired in 1973.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Charpentier, Marie 1903 births 1994 deaths French mathematicians University of Poitiers alumni French women mathematicians 20th-century French educators 20th-century French women People from Poitiers