André Weil

Andr? Weil (May 6, 1906 - August 6, 1998) was one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century. He is known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry, He was a founding member, and de facto the early leader, of the influential Bourbaki group. The philosopher Simone Weil was his sister.

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Born in Paris to Alsatian parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, he studied in Paris, Rome and G?ttingen and received his doctorate in 1928. A conscientious objector and Jew, Weil fled France for Finland when World War II broke out. A famous anecdote was confirmed in his autobiography: after having been arrested under suspicion of espionage in Finland, he was saved from being shot only by the intervention of Rolf Nevanlinna.

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After the war, Weil went to the United States where he taught

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at the University of Chicago before settling at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

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He made substantial contributions in many areas, the most important being profound connections between algebraic geometry and number theory; other significant results were on Pontryagin duality and differential geometry. Among his accomplishments were the so-called Weil conjectures (later proved by Bernard Dwork, Alexander Grothendieck and Pierre Deligne), the Riemann hypothesis for function fields, laying proper foundations for algebraic geometry, and discovery that the so-called Weil representation, previously introduced in quantum mechanics by Segal and Shale, gave a proper framework for understanding the classical theory of quadratic forms.

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Andr? Weil should not be confused with Andrew Wiles, another famous mathematician who, like Weil, has done important work in elliptic curves; the similarity of their names is a coincidence. Pronunciation: "Weil" is vay, while "Weyl" is vile, and "Wiles" is just wiles.

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André Weil related Images and Photos (experimental)

Expo Galerie Andre Weil	Andre Agassi	Andre Dawson	Andre Miller
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