Bernard Morin | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 3, 1931 Shanghai, China |
| Died | March 12, 2018 (aged 87) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics Topology |
| Institutions | Institute for Advanced Study University of Strasbourg |
| Doctoral advisor | René Thom |
Bernard Morin (French: [mɔʁɛ̃]; 3 March 1931 in Shanghai, China – 12 March 2018)[1] was a French mathematician, specifically a topologist.
Early life and education
Morin lost his sight at the age of six due to glaucoma, but his blindness did not prevent him from having a successful career in mathematics.[2] He received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.[3][2]
Career
Morin was a member of the group that first exhibited an eversion of the sphere,[4] i.e., a homotopy which starts with a sphere and ends with the same sphere but turned inside-out. He also discovered the Morin surface, which is a half-way model for the sphere eversion, and used it to prove a lower bound on the number of steps needed to turn a sphere inside out.
Morin discovered the first parametrization of Boy's surface (earlier used as a half-way model), in 1978. His graduate student François Apéry, in 1986, discovered another parametrization of Boy's surface, which conforms to the general method for parametrizing non-orientable surfaces.[5]
Morin worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Most of his career, though, he spent at the University of Strasbourg.
- Morin's surface.
See also
- Blind mathematicians: Leonhard Euler, Nicholas Saunderson, Lev Pontryagin, Louis Antoine, Zachary Battles
References
- ↑ "Décès de Bernard Morin". Société Mathématique de France (in French). Archived from the original on 2018-10-12. Retrieved 2018-10-11.
- 1 2 Apéry, François. "BERNARD MORIN (1931-2018)" (PDF). Société Mathématique de France (in French). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 October 2018.
- ↑ "Bernard Morin". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
- ↑ Morin, Bernard (13 November 1978). "Équations du retournement de la sphère" [Equations of the sphere eversion]. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris (in French): 879–882. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
- ↑ Weisstein, Eric W. "Boy Surface". Wolfram MathWorld. Archived from the original on 2004-04-13.
George K. Francis & Bernard Morin (1980) "Arnold Shapiro's Eversion of the Sphere", Mathematical Intelligencer 2(4):200–3.
External links
- Photos of Morin Archived 2019-04-20 at the Wayback Machine with stereolithography models of sphere eversion.
- The World of Blind Mathematicians, PDF file at the American Mathematical Society's website.