Émile Borel, the Scholar and the Statesman
Mathematician, committed politician and influential member of the French intelligensia, Émile Borel alone embodied the ideal of the "Republic of Professors". From Dreyfusism to the Resistance, via the Popular Front and the early days of European construction, he conducted scientific research and civic struggle side by side, convinced that the same rational rigor governs science and politics. His work on measure and chance — notions whose mathematical depth far exceeds intuition — laid lasting foundations, from Lebesgue's theory to normal numbers. The latter, whose strangeness the writer Jorge Luis Borges seemed to have foreseen in his fiction, still open up unexpected horizons today, from ergodic theory to computer science.
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Can you govern a country the way you solve an equation?
A portrait of Émile Borel, an École normale supérieure alumnus and scholar who combined a scientific career with political activism, from Dreyfusism to the Resistance, through radicalism and international intellectual cooperation.
How a specialist in probability becomes a pillar of the Republic of Professors
A portrait of Émile Borel, the illustrious mathematician of the Belle Époque, who combined a brilliant scientific career with political engagement and a fight for justice.
Marie Curie, Borel, Perrin: a scholarly circle on a Breton peninsula
The Arcouest peninsula, near Paimpol, was a regular holiday retreat for many academics, including Émile Borel and Marie Curie.
Émile Borel: probability at the cradle of quantum theory
Émile Borel's notebook on Paul Langevin's course at the Collège de France: a unique testimony to the scientific ferment surrounding quanta.
Émile Borel: Why fund a thousand researchers to find one?
A portrait of Émile Borel's commitment to funding scientific research, European cooperation, and the evolution of his political thought from radicalism to liberalism.
Measuring infinity: how Borel and Lebesgue went beyond Newton
Explore Lebesgue measure, Borel's normal numbers and the foundations of probability theory through the history of mathematics.
Normal numbers: The Library of Babel hides your password
Explore the normal numbers defined by Borel in 1909, revealed through the literary analogy of Borges's Library of Babel. A meeting point of number theory, probability, and analysis.