Sophie Piccard

Sophie Piccard (born September 27, 1904 in Saint Petersburg , † January 6, 1990 in Freiburg im Üechtland ) was a Swiss mathematician.

Life

Sophie Piccard, daughter of the Swiss professor Eugéne Ferdinand Piccard and his Russian wife, studied mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Smolensk with a diploma in 1925. She then went to Switzerland with her parents. Since her Russian diploma was not recognized, she studied at the University of Lausanne with a degree (licentiate) in mathematics in 1927 and her doctorate in 1929 with Dmitry Mirimanoff . Since she could not find a job as a teacher, she worked as an actuary at La Neuchâteloise from 1929 to 1932 and in a newspaper ( Feuille d'Avis de Neuchâtel ) from 1932 to 1936 . From 1936 she gave lectures on geometry at the University of Neuchâtel and in 1938 became an associate professor for higher geometry. She also taught stochastics and insurance. In 1940 she founded the non-university center for pure mathematics (Center de mathématiques pures) and was its director. Despite conflicts with male colleagues, where she was offensive, in 1943 she became the first full professor at a university in western Switzerland.

She is known for a monograph on metrical geometry of Euclidean spaces from 1939. She dealt with group theory (finite groups, combinatorial group theory), linear algebra and set theory. She published mathematical works well into old age and also edited the works of her mother Eulalie (née Güeé) on Russian history and literature, who died in 1957.

In 1932 and 1936 she was an invited speaker at the international congresses of mathematicians .

Fonts

• Sur les ensembles de distances des ensembles de points d'un espace Euclidean, Mémoires de L'Université de Neuchâtel 13, Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1939

literature

• Sandrine Zaslawsky: Piccard, Sophie. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Web links

• Biography at Agnes Scott College