Jules Henri Poincaré (29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a
French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of
science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last
Universalist by Eric Temple Bell, since he excelled in all fields of the
discipline as it existed during his lifetime.
Poincaré
As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, which was one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics until it was solved in 2002–2003 by Grigori Perelman. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology.
Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. In 1905, Poincaré first proposed gravitational waves (ondes gravifiques) emanating from a body and propagating at the speed of light as being required by the Lorentz transformations.
The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named after him.
Awards
Named after him
The fact that renowned theoretical physicists like Poincaré, Boltzmann or Gibbs were not awarded the Nobel Prize is seen as evidence that the Nobel committee had more regard for experimentation than theory. In Poincaré's case, several of those who nominated him pointed out that the greatest problem was to name a specific discovery, invention, or technique.
As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. He was responsible for formulating the Poincaré conjecture, which was one of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics until it was solved in 2002–2003 by Grigori Perelman. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology.
Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a letter to Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) in 1905. Thus he obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, an important step in the formulation of the theory of special relativity. In 1905, Poincaré first proposed gravitational waves (ondes gravifiques) emanating from a body and propagating at the speed of light as being required by the Lorentz transformations.
The Poincaré group used in physics and mathematics was named after him.
Honors
Awards
- Oscar II, King of Sweden's mathematical
competition (1887)
- Foreign member of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences (1897)
- American Philosophical Society 1899
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
of
- Bolyai Prize in 1905
- Matteucci Medal 1905
- Académie française 1909
- Bruce Medal (1911)
Named after him
- Institut Henri Poincaré (mathematics and
theoretical physics center)
- Poincaré Prize (Mathematical Physics
International Prize)
- Annales Henri Poincaré (Scientific Journal)
- Poincaré Seminar (nicknamed "Bourbaphy")
- The crater Poincaré on the Moon
- Asteroid 2021 Poincaré
Henri Poincaré did not receive
the Nobel Prize in Physics, but he had influential advocates like Henri Becquerel or committee member
Gösta Mittag-Leffler. The nomination archive reveals that Poincaré received a total of 51 nominations
between 1904 and 1912, the year of his death. Of the 58 nominations
for the 1910 Nobel Prize, 34 named Poincaré.
Nominators included Nobel laureates Hendrik Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman
(both of 1902), Marie Curie (of 1903), Albert Michelson (of 1907), Gabriel
Lippmann (of 1908) and Guglielmo Marconi (of 1909).
The fact that renowned theoretical physicists like Poincaré, Boltzmann or Gibbs were not awarded the Nobel Prize is seen as evidence that the Nobel committee had more regard for experimentation than theory. In Poincaré's case, several of those who nominated him pointed out that the greatest problem was to name a specific discovery, invention, or technique.
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