Henri Poincaré

Henri Poincaré was born in 1854 in Nancy, France, into a distinguished family; his cousin Raymond Poincaré later became president of France. As a child he had diphtheria and was taught at home for a time by his mother. He studied at the École Polytechnique and the School of Mines and briefly worked as a mining engineer before becoming a professor at the University of Paris. He made major contributions to nearly every branch of mathematics of his day. In studying the 'three-body problem' of how three objects move under gravity, entered for a prize offered by the King of Sweden in 1887, he discovered that tiny differences in starting conditions can lead to very different results, an idea basic to modern chaos theory. He helped found topology, the study of shapes under stretching, and the Poincaré conjecture he posed was solved only in the twenty-first century. He also worked on the physics of electricity and on relativity. In Science and Hypothesis (1902) he discussed the role of conventions in science. He died in Paris in 1912.

Henri Poincaré is also an author in the library: author page and works.

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