- Jacques Tits
Jacques Tits (born
August 12 ,1930 inUccle ) is a French (and formerly Belgian)mathematician . He has written and cowritten a large number of papers on a number of subjects, principallygroup theory .His academic career includes professorships at the
Free University of Brussels (now split into theUniversité Libre de Bruxelles and theVrije Universiteit Brussel )(1962-1964), theUniversity of Bonn (1964-1974) and theCollège de France inParis , until becomingemeritus in 2000. He has been a French citizen and a member of theFrench Academy of Sciences since 1974.He introduced the theory of "buildings" (sometimes known as "
Tits building s"), which are combinatorial structures on which groups act, particularly inalgebraic group theory (includingfinite group s, and groups defined over thep-adic number s). The related theory of(B, N) pair s is a basic tool in the theory ofgroups of Lie type . He also classified allpolar space s of rank at least three and introduced thegeneralized n-gons . Another of his well known theorems is the "Tits alternative ": if "G" is a finitely generatedsubgroup of alinear group , then either "G" has asolvable subgroup offinite index or it has afree subgroup of rank 2.Tits was an "honorary" member of the
Nicolas Bourbaki group; as such, he helped popularizeHarold Scott MacDonald Coxeter 's work, introducing terms such asCoxeter number ,Coxeter group , andCoxeter graph .Erratum Siobhan John McKay ~~~~Siobahn Roberts, [http://www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/Coxeter.pdf "Donald Coxeter: The man who saved geometry"] , "
Toronto Life ", January 2003]Tits received the
Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1993, theCantor Medal from theDeutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German Mathematical Society) in 1996, and the German distinction "Pour le Mérite ". In 2008 he was awarded theAbel Prize , along withJohn Griggs Thompson , “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory.”cite web
url = http://www.abelprisen.no/en/nyheter/nyhet.html?id=163
title = Thompson and Tits share the Abel Prize for 2008
publisher =The Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund
date = 2008-05-17
accessdate = 2008-05-20
archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/5XxtY4s3z
archivedate = 2008-05-20
quote = The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2008 to John Griggs Thompson, University of Florida and Jacques Tits, Collège de France. This was announced by the Academy’s President, Ole Didrik Lærum, at a press conference in Oslo today. Thompson and Tits receives the Abel Prize “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory”.] He is a member of several Academies of Sciences.The
Tits group is named after him.References
External links
*
*
* [http://www.abelprisen.no/nedlastning/2008/biography_en_tits.pdf Biography at the Abel Prize site] (pdf)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.