Cédric Villani

Cédric Villani (born 5 October 1973, Brive- la -Gaillarde ) is a multi-award -winning ( and Others Fields Medal 2010) French mathematical physicist and mathematician.

Life and work

Villani studied from 1992 at the École Normale Superieure. In 1994, he earned his Agrégation. In 1998 he received his doctorate with Pierre -Louis Lions. Villani is since 2001 professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Since 2009 he is Director of the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris. Since 2007 he is member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Villani is particularly concerned with partial differential equations from statistical mechanics, in particular the Boltzmann equation, where he could not prove close to equilibrium as the first convergence theorems for initial values. He also dealt with applications of the theory of optimal transport ( the theory goes back to a question of Monge and has been developed in particular by Kantorovich ) in differential geometry - in particular, it was with their help with John Lott lower bounds of Ricci curvature in general metric spaces (longitude rooms).

He received the Fields Medal in the first place for his work on the Boltzmann equation and nonlinear Landau damping of the kinetic equations of plasma physics. About the genesis of his research, he reported in the book " The Living Theorem" ( theorems vivant, 2012), which appeared in German translation in 2013.

Awards and Honors

In 2010 he received the Fields Medal. In 2009 he received the Henri Poincaré Prize for innovative work on kinetic theory and optimal transport with applications to dissipative physical systems and Riemannian geometry. Also in 2009, he was awarded the Fermat Prize and in 2008 the EMS price. In 2007 he received the Jacques Herbrand Prize of the French Mathematical Society, 2003 Peccot - Vimont Prize of the Collège de France and the 2001 Louis -Armand Prize of the French Academy of Sciences. In 2006 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM ) in Madrid ( Hypocoercive diffusion operators ) and 2003 Plenarsprecher at the International Congress of Mathematical Physics. 2013 he is Gibbs Lecturer and 2014, he received the Joseph L. Doob Prize ( for his book Optimal transport).

Writings

• Mathematical topics in collisional kinetic theory. In: Denis Serre, Susan Friedlander (Editor): Handbook of mathematical fluid dynamics. Volume 1, Elsevier, 2002.
• Topics in Optimal Transportation. American Mathematical Society, 2003.
• Optimal transport, old and new ( = basic teachings of the mathematical sciences Volume 338 ). Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-540-71049-3.
• Optimal transportation, dissipative partial differential equations and functional inequalities ( Lecture notes in Mathematics, Vol 1813). Springer Verlag, 2002 ( Caffarelli, Salsa Editor).
• Limites de l' équation de hydro dynamiques Boltzmann ( d'après C. Bardos, F. Golse, CD Levermore, P.-L. Lions, N. Masmoudi, L. Saint -Raymond ), Séminaire Bourbaki No. 893, June 2001, astérisque band 282, 2002.
• Mathematics of granular materials. In: J. Statistical Physics. Volume 124, 2006, pp. 781-822.
• Hypocoercivity, Memoirs American Mathematical Society, Volume 202, 2009.
• The lively theorem, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-086007-1 ( original: theorems vivant, Bernard Grasset, Paris, 2012). Review of Jacques Hurtubise, Notices AMS, 2014, No.2, pdf