At the crossroads of sciences
Was he a physicist or a mathematician? Henri Poincaré's vision goes beyond divisions, limits, and boundaries. Dominating all the physical sciences of his era, he taught electricity as well as optics or electrodynamics. It is by studying curves defined by differential equations that he examined with an innovative eye the old problem of the stability of the solar system and gave birth to dynamical systems, a theory at the frontiers of analysis, topology and celestial mechanics. Poincaré also played a determining role in the study of the speed of light, Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and the demonstration of the Earth's motion in the ether. With Lorentz, he developed the formalism of special relativity, which Einstein would later take up.
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The origins of chaos theory with Poincaré | Tangente
The birth of "deterministic chaos" grew out of Henri Poincaré's entry for a prize offered by King Oscar II. The French mathematician's paper would go down in history for containing a major error—one that proved extraordinarily fruitful for science.
Special relativity: Poincaré forgotten? | Tangente
At the dawn of the 20th century, spectacular advances in science reveal the limitations of Newtonian theories in physics. A revolution is in the air, and it will take shape with the advent of general relativity. Many scientists, including Lorentz and Poincaré, are working towards it. History will remember Einstein, who publishes a groundbreaking paper in 1905.
Henri Poincaré prize in mathematical physics | Tangente
The Henri Poincaré Prize, sponsored by the Daniel-Lagolnitzer Foundation in partnership with the International Association of Mathematical Physics, now ranks among the major scientific prizes.
Poincaré's mathematical physics lectures | Tangente
In the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, Henri Poincaré was the sole scientist keeping alive the great French dynasty of mathematical physicists, whose ranks included Laplace, Ampère, Poisson and Fourier.
Bachelier, father of financial mathematics | Tangente
In 1900, the young French mathematician Louis Bachelier defended his doctoral thesis on Théorie de la spéculation (Theory of Speculation) at the Sorbonne.
Poincaré amid the quantum revolution | Tangente
At the dawn of the 20th century, quantum theory set the world’s scientific community abuzz.