Passionate about bridge, theater, comics and music, he spent his life seeking connections between his interests and mathematics. For Éditions POLE, he and the cartoonist Labidi created the comic book Œdipeland, set on a planet where the Francs always tell the truth and the Vils always lie—a rule which, together with the laws of heredity, makes it possible to solve dozens of puzzles over the course of the story.
But what perhaps distinguished Gérard Cohen-Zardi most was his admiration for Évariste Galois. In his professional work, he studied in detail both the young Romantic mathematician's research and all the algebra that grew out of it; he was one of the leading experts on the subject, so much so that he wrote more than half of special issue 60 of Tangente Sup, devoted to Galois. That issue has just gone out of print, while last month saw the publication of Tangente special issue 82, Sur les traces d’Évariste Galois, an issue he did not live to see. There is no doubt that several of Gérard's articles will appear in the Bibliothèque Tangente book due out in a year's time.
