René Taton

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René Taton (born April 4, 1915 in L'Échelle , Ardennes department , † August 9, 2004 in Ajaccio in Corsica ) was a French historian of mathematics and science . From 1954 to 1971 Taton was director of the International Science Council (ICSU).

Life

René Taton was born in 1915 in the small community of L'Échelle in the Ardennes . He studied first at the École normal in Charleville-Mézières and later in Nancy . He graduated in 1935 from the École normal supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines ( ENS LSH for short ) in Fontenay / Saint-Cloud . As ancien élève, he belonged to the specifically French network of relationships between the alumni of this grande école, often perceived as impenetrable by outsiders . He then spent two years at the Sorbonne .

In 1941 Taton received his Agrégé de mathématiques and became a high school teacher. In 1951 he did his doctorate with Gaston Bachelard on Gaspard Monge and additionally on Gérard Desargues (both important for the history of perspective ). From 1952 he was a scientist at the CNRS in Paris and from 1964 also at the École pratique supérieure. He was editor of the Revue d'histoire des sciences with Suzanne Delorme and directed the “Center Alexandre Koyré ” with Pierre Costabel . From 1954 to 1971 he was the successor to Pierre Sergescu (ex-director of the Romanian École Polytechnique) director of the Conseil international pour la science (ICSU) of UNESCO . In 1957, together with Fernand Braudel and Alexandre Koyré, he founded the section for the history of science at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales , which he headed as Koyré's successor from 1964 to 1983.

Shortly before his sudden death at the age of 89, Taton was still working on an edition of Gaspard Monge's writings, to whose career and discoveries he had devoted a large part of his research work.

Honors

In 1975 René Taton was awarded the George Sarton Medal , in 1997 he received the Kenneth O. May Prize and the Koyré Medal .

Works

Major works

Selection according to the International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians (IDIH)

  • Pour continuer le calcul intégral (collection de l´ Abbé Moreux ), around 1945
  • Histoire du calcul , Que sais-je? , 1946
  • L'Histoire de la géometrie descriptive, 1954
  • Causalités et accidents de la découverte scientifique, 1955
  • La science contemporaine, 1961 [Abelès, Florin]
  • with Albert Flocon : La Perspective , PUF, coll.Que-Sais-je?, 1963
  • with Jean-Paul Flad: Le calcul mécanique , PUF, coll.Que-Sais-je?, 1963
  • Les origines de l'Académie royale des sciences, 1965
  • Editor and co-author: Histoire générale des sciences , 4 volumes (around 3270 pages), 1957 to 1964, new edition 1966–1983 and 1996 by the Press Universitaire de France (PUF).
  • Derniers écrits , 2000 (compiled by R. Halleux)

more publishments

  • Évariste Galois . In: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 5, New York 1972, pp. 259-265.
  • Les relations d'Évariste Galois avec les mathématiciens de son temps . In: Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 1.1 (1947), pp. 114-130.
  • Évariste Galois and His Contemporaries . In: Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 15 (2) (1983), pp. 107-118.
  • Sur les relations scientifiques d'Augustin Cauchy et d'Évariste Galois . In: Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 24.2 (1971), pp. 123-148.
  • Évariste Galois et ses biographes. De l'histoire aux legends . In: Un parcours en histoire des mathématiques. Travaux et recherches . Nantes, 1993, pp. 155-172.
  • La géométrie projective en France de Desargues à Poncelet , Paris 1951
  • Various articles about Gaspard Monge : Compilation of the Center Alexandre Koyré ( Memento from April 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

In 1951 he published the mathematical works of Desargues (Presse Universitaire de France).

literature

  • Siegfried Gottwald , Hans-Joachim Illgauds, Karl-Heinz Schlote (Hrsg.): Lexicon of important mathematicians . Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-323-00319-5 .
  • Jean Dhombres: René Taton (1915-2004) . In: CSHPM-Bulletin (Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics) 35, November 2004, ISSN  0835-5924 , p. 7, online (PDF; 1.77 MB) .
  • Henk Kubbinga ( University of Groningen ): Eloge: René Taton, 1915–2004 . In: Isis 96, 2005, pp. 618-620.
  • Dominique Fauque (Directeur d'études en histoire des sciences à l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales): In memoriam, René Taton (1915–2004) . In: Revue d'histoire des sciences 28 July / December 2005, No. 2, ISSN  0048-7996 , pp. 267-303.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Entretien avec René Taton . Propos recueillis par Jeanne Pfeiffer (detailed interview with Taton) Center Alexandre Koyré ( Memento of the original from November 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.koyre.cnrs.fr
  2. ^ Jean Dhombres: Rene Taton (1915-2004) . In: CSHPM-Bulletin (Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics), No. 35 November 2004, page 7 ISSN  0835-5924 [1] (English)
  3. ^ History of Science Society The George Sarton Medal, list of winners
  4. ↑ International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians (IDIH) René Taton

Web links

  • Center Alexandre Koyré , Colloque d'hommage à René Taton, Paris, June 8-10, 2006 (symposium in his honor, French)
personal data
SURNAME Taton, René
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH L'Échelle , Ardennes department
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 2004
Place of death Ajaccio