Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat – Woman of the Week

Today is the 88th birthday of Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (born 29 December 1923 in Lille, France), the first woman to be elected to the Académie des Sciences Française (“French Academy of Sciences”). She is a French mathematician and physicist and a Grand Officier of the Légion d’honneur.

Daughter of the physicist Georges Bruhat, sister of the mathematician François Bruhat, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat received her bachelor’s degree in 1941 and from 1943 to 1946 she studied at the École normale supérieure (“ENS”) in Paris. She taught at the ENS in 1946 until 1949. From 1949 to 1951 she was a research assistant at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (“CNRS”), as a result of which she received her doctorate.

She spent 1951 and 1952 at the Institute for Advanced Study and the following year, joined the faculty at Marseilles. In 1958 she was awarded the Silver Medal of the CNRS. From 1958 to 1959 she taught at the University of Reims. In 1960 she became a professor at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris, and has remained professor or professor emeritus until her retirement in 1992.

In 1979 she became the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences in its 300-year history. She was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. Her two-volume set on Analysis, Manifolds, and Physics [Summary] is considered a classic in the field.

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat has two daughters and a son. She is a widow; her second husband was Gustave Choquet. She was previously married to Léonce Foures, a professor of mathematics at the Marseille faculty, who had studied with Henri Cartan.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Choquet-Bruhat, http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/bruhat.htm