Michel Las Vergnas (11 January 1941 – 19 January 2013) was a French mathematician associated with Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University in Paris, and a research director emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.[1][2]
Las Vergnas earned his Ph.D. in 1972 from Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University, under the supervision of Claude Berge.[3] He was one of the founders of the European Journal of Combinatorics, which began publishing in 1980.[4]
His initial research was in graph theory, and particularly in the theories of matching and connectivity.[1] Beginning in 1975, he became one of the pioneers of the theory of oriented matroids,[1][5][6] and since that time he was interested in connections between combinatorics and geometry.[1]
A workshop on combinatorial geometry, held in Marseilles in April 2013, was dedicated to his memory.[7]
It seems fair to say that the major credit for the origination of oriented matroid theory should be shared by Robert Bland, Jon Folkman, Michel Las Vergnas, and Jim Lawrence..