A university professor who had passed the agrégation in mathematics, a specialist in graph theory and group theory, and a devotee of literature and poetry, he was co-opted into Oulipo by Raymond Queneau in 1966 and went on to become one of its mainstays.
All his literary work was bound up with mathematics, whether in his erudite poetry—using fixed forms that he theorized (haiku, renga, sestina, sonnet), used or invented (hog, baobab, trident)—or in playful yet erudite novels and short stories. An admirer of Japanese culture, he was also an excellent Go player. His varied body of work also included plays, works of literary theory, and essays; he wrote poems and stories for young readers, translated Lewis Carroll, and helped translate the Bible…
His work received the Grand Prix national de la poésie in 1990, the Académie française's Grand Prix de littérature Paul Morand in 2008, and the Prix Goncourt de la poésie in 2021.
From Mathématiques et littérature (Bibliothèque Tangente 28, 2006) to Les groupes (Bibliothèque Tangente 80, 2023), we have lost count of the articles Tangente has devoted to him. It is with the deepest sadness that we mourn the loss of a leading figure in contemporary literature and a tireless researcher.
