Abstract
Born in 1923 in Monbéliard, France, René Thom, an interdisciplinary mathematician by vocation and perhaps by training, which took place within the great French school of mathematics, was also remarkably adept at developing the inherent technical aspects of the great specialisations. With the results achieved while still a young man he won the Fields Medal, the highest international recognition for mathematicians. By laying out the general concepts, he paved the way to an original attempt to apply mathematics to natural phenomena, today known as “catastrophe theory”.
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Betti, R. (2011). René Thom. In: Bartocci, C., Betti, R., Guerraggio, A., Lucchetti, R. (eds) Mathematical Lives. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13606-1_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13606-1_23
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