Jean Cavaillès

Jean Cavaillès (1903–1944), French mathematician and philosopher of mathematics. He excelled in his studies in philosophy and placed first in the agrégation examination upon entering the École normale supérieure in 1923, while also obtaining a degree in mathematics. Having passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1927, he taught in secondary schools before preparing a thesis on the philosophical foundations of mathematics, for which he consulted the archives of Paul du Bois-Reymond and studied the correspondence between Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor. In 1937, he defended two theses simultaneously under Léon Brunschvicg’s supervision: Méthode axiomatique et formalisme and Remarques sur la formation de la théorie abstraite des ensembles. He subsequently taught at the University of Strasbourg. During the Occupation, he joined the Resistance and became one of its most active figures. Arrested, he was executed by firing squad in February 1944. He was posthumously made a Companion of the Liberation, and his remains are interred in the chapel of the Sorbonne. His philosophical work, centred on the relations between formal logic, set theory and transcendental philosophy, had a lasting influence on the epistemology of mathematics in France.