Albert Lautman

Albert Lautman (born February 8, 1908 in Paris , † August 1, 1944 in Martignas-sur-Jalle near Bordeaux ) was a French mathematician and philosopher who was shot by the Germans as a member of the French resistance .

life and work

Lautman attended the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he became friends with Jacques Herbrand , and from 1926 the École normal supérieure . Here he dealt with mathematical logic , but also attended an officer course. He then spent a few months in Berlin and Vienna. After admission to high school ( agrégation ) and military service, he married and moved to Japan for two years, where he taught French literature and philosophy in Osaka . Back again, he attended the seminars of Gaston Julia in addition to his teaching activities in Vesoul and Chartres .

As a Jew worried about developments in Germany, he was recruited as an officer before the war began. When the war broke out, he became the captain of a battery. After shooting down several planes, he was taken prisoner and taken to a camp in Silesia ( Hoyerswerda ). In October 1941 he and a few others managed to escape through an 80 m long tunnel dug over eight months and to break through into the free zone of France. Here he joined the resistance, was responsible for the Haute-Garonne department and helped many resistance fighters, Jews and Allied airmen to cross the border to Spain. When he wanted to join a volunteer corps in preparation for the Allied landing, he was arrested on May 15, 1944 and shot with 49 others on August 1.

Lautman undertook a philosophical interpretation of the mathematics of his time, taking a stand against the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle as well as against the widespread intuitionism and constructivism . For him, mathematical statements denote a reality sui generis that ultimately goes back to dialectical ideas - contradicting basic relationships, which, however, can be better and better described as mathematical theories develop. Lautman thus defended a dynamic mathematical Platonism .

His work was received primarily by Gilles Deleuze (in difference and repetition ) and Alain Badiou ( Being and the Event ).

Fonts

• Essai sur les notions de structure et d'existence en mathématiques (main work on obtaining a doctorate in philosophy, Paris 1937)
• Essai sur l'unité des sciences mathématiques dans leur developpement actuel (supplementary paper, Paris 1937)
• Nouvelles recherches sur la structure dialectique des mathématiques , Paris 1939
• Symétrie et dissymétrie en mathématiques et en physique , Paris 1946
• Leprobleme du temps , Paris 1946
• Mathématiques et réalité , 1935
• De la réalité inhérente aux théories mathématiques , 1937
• L'axiomatique et la méthode de division , 1937
• Considérations sur la logique mathématique , 1933

expenditure

• Essai sur l'unité des mathématiques et divers écrits , Paris: Union générale d'éditions 1977
• Les mathématiques, les idées et le réel physique , Paris: Vrin 2006

(Both editions contain all of the above texts, the younger volume also contains a Lautman congress report and an exchange of letters with Maurice Fréchet , as well as updated introductions, bibliographies and registers.)

literature

• Mathématiques et philosophie: Jean Cavaillès, Albert Lautman. Revue d'histoire des sciences 40, 1, Paris 1987. The special issue contains essays by Catherine Chevalley ( Albert Lautman et le souci logique , 49-77) and Jean Petitot ( Refaire le “Timée”. Introduction à la philosophie mathématique d'Albert Lautman , 79-115) and a selection of letters.
• Jacques Lautman: Presentation , in: Albert Lautman: Les mathématiques, les idées et le réel physique , Paris: Vrin 2006, 7-13, offers detailed biographical information.
• Albert Lautman, philosopher des mathématiques . In: Jean-Pierre Marquis (ed.): Philosophiques . tape 37 , no. 1 . Société de philosophie du Québec, 2010, ISSN  0316-2923 , p. 3–217 ( erudit.org [accessed August 15, 2016] A previously unpublished manuscript by Lautman and 15 articles dealing with his work).

Web links

• Introduction to the Essai sur les notions de structure et d'existence en mathématiques in English translation including some quotations from Deleuze from difference and repetition