Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat
smiling mathematician Yvonne in 2006
Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat in 2006
Born (1923-12-29) 29 December 1923 (age 100)
Lille, France
NationalityFrench
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Known forWell-posedness of the vacuum Einstein Equations
AwardsGrand Officier of the Légion d'honneur
Elected to the French Academy of Sciences
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, physics
InstitutionsPierre and Marie Curie University
Thesis Théorème d'existence pour certains systèmes d'équations aux dérivées partielles non linéaires  (1951)
Doctoral advisorAndré Lichnérowicz

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (French: [ivɔn ʃɔkɛ bʁy.a] ; born 29 December 1923) is a French mathematician and physicist. She has made seminal contributions to the study of Einstein's general theory of relativity, by showing that the Einstein equations can be put into the form of an initial value problem which is well-posed. In 2015, her breakthrough paper was listed by the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of thirteen 'milestone' results in the study of general relativity, across the hundred years in which it had been studied.[1]

She was the first woman to be elected to the French Academy of Sciences and is a Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur.[2]

  1. ^ Focus issue: Milestones of general relativity. Classical and Quantum Gravity (2015).
  2. ^ (in French) Décret of 11 July 2008, published in the JO of 13 July 2008