Laurent Schwartz | Biography

Laurent Schwartz has won many prestigious awards for his contributions to mathematics, but his most influential work has been in the areas of functional analysis, integral calculus, and differential calculus. In particular, it was his work on the theory of distributions in the late 1940s for which Schwartz will always be remembered.

Schwartz was born on March 5, 1915 in Paris, France. His father was a well-known surgeon who helped Schwartz recover from the polio he contracted when he was 11. As a boy, Schwartz was an excellent student, doing especially well in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. He attended the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) for his early education. It was there that Schwartz became politically active--a characteristic that would stay with him for life. The basis of his political beliefs became nonviolence, working against oppression, service to humanity, and intellectual honesty. He remained a devoted Trotskyist until about 1947.

Schwartz graduated from the ENS in 1937, after which he performed his obligatory service in the military. Serving as an officer until 1939, he remained for a third year of active service when World War II started. The war presented a real danger to Schwartz because of his Jewish heritage; he changed his name to Laurent-Marie Selimartin, a traditionally upper-class Protestant name, to try to fool the Nazis. Some of his academic friends were not so resourceful or lucky.

In 1940, Schwartz traveled to Toulouse, France to be with his parents and there found a position with the National Science Academy. This ended in 1942, but a research stipend from Michelin sustained Schwartz from 1943 until the end of the war in 1945. Again finding himself without a way to make a living at that point, he decided to move to the University of Clermont-Ferand. He met André Weil at the school, which helped inspire Schwartz to write his doctoral thesis ("Real Exponential Sums," 1943) in the following two years.

Despite the mental and physical exhaustion produced by the war, Schwartz nevertheless came up with his most brilliant mathematical work just as the conflict was ending. Taking a position as professor in the Faculty of Science at France's University of Nancy in 1945, he soon finished formalizing his theory of distributions, which replaced the "delta function" of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac. Prior to Schwartz's breakthrough, physicists used the Dirac delta in their work with mass distributions. However, while it was a useful tool, it was limited. Schwartz's theory of distributions for functional analysis introduced a more classically mathematical function, which also came to be used heavily in differential equations, spectral theory, and potential theory. He published his findings in the 1948 paper "Theory of Distributions," which earned him the coveted Fields Medal. He published a book on the topic in 1950-1951.

Schwartz left the University of Nancy in 1952, joining the faculty of the Sorbonne in Paris the following year. In 1959 he also began working at the Polytechnical School in Palaiseau as professor of analysis. He remained at both schools until his retirement from active teaching in 1983; Schwartz was especially helpful in initiating fundamental reforms in the training programs of the Polytechnical School and making it a major center of mathematical research. His efficacy in this respect was reflected in the French Government's appointment of Schwartz as president of the National Committee for the Evaluation of French Universities in 1985. He held that post until 1989.

Still intensely concerned with world politics, Schwartz remains busy and involved with the latest mathematical developments. He wrote an autobiography in 1997. Schwartz and his wife, herself a professional mathematician, were married in 1938 and have had two children, one of whom died in 1971.