A towering figure in 20th-century algebra, he held the chair of group theory at the Collège de France from 1973 to 1999. In 2008, he received the Abel Prize (see Tangente 122).
Jacques Tits made extraordinary contributions to algebra. Several concern the classification of finite simple groups (see Les Groupes, special issue 80 of Tangente, currently on newsstands): his geometric constructions helped uncover several sporadic groups between 1956 and 1959; his theory of buildings (which expresses the algebraic structure of linear groups in geometric terms) enabled the American mathematician Michael Aschbacher to bring one of his research programs on the subject to completion; above all, Tits helped "simplify" the study of the Monster, a group whose staggering size had made it seem elusive.
