Commemoration of Maurice Audin’s thesis who was killed during the Algerian war. (Commémoration de la thèse de Maurice Audin assassiné pendant la guerre d’Algérie.) (French) Zbl 0911.01007

Schwartz, Laurent

Gaz. Math., Soc. Math. Fr. 75, 11-16 (1998).

The well-known French analyst and opponent of the French war in Algeria (1954-1962) reports on the celebration of the fourtieth anniversity of the presentation “in absentia” of Maurice Audin’s thesis in December 1957. Audin, a communist from Algiers, had been arrested in June 1957, and vanished after torture by French soldiers. The posthumous presentation of Audin’s thesis on topological vector spaces, which was, according to Schwartz, “totally original” and contained one “beautiful spectral theorem”, was generally understood as a sign of protest against the war by French universities. It led to the donation of a “Prix Audin” and to the foundation of a “Comité Audin” that pressed for the persecution of war crimes in Algeria.

Reviewer: R.Siegmund-Schultze (Berlin)

MSC:

01A70	Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
01A80	Sociology (and profession) of mathematics

Keywords:

Maurice Audin; victim of war in Algeria; vector spaces