René Taton

René Taton ( born April 4, 1915 in L' échelle, Ardennes department; † August 9, 2004 in Ajaccio on Corsica) was a French mathematics and science historian. From 1954 to 1971 Taton was Director of the International Science Council ( ICSU ).

Life

René Taton came in 1915 in the small village of L' échelle in the Ardennes to the world. He first studied at the Ecole Normale in Charleville- Mézières and later in Nancy. He made in 1935 at the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines ( ENS LSH short ) in Fontenay / Saint -Cloud its conclusion. As the ancien élève he was one of the specifically French, outsiders often perceived as impenetrable network of the former Grande école this. He then spent two years at the Sorbonne.

1941 received his Agrégé de Mathématiques and was a high school teacher Taton. In 1951 he received his PhD (important both for the history of perspective) at Gaston Bachelard on Gaspard Monge and additionally Gérard Desargues. From 1952 he was a scientist at the CNRS in Paris and in 1964 at the École pratique addition supérieure. He was with Suzanne Delorme editor of the Revue d' histoire des sciences and directed with Pierre Costabel the "Centre Alexandre Koyré ". 1954-1971 he was the successor of Pierre Sergescu ( ex-director of the Romanian École Polytechnique ) Director of the Conseil international pour la science ( ICSU ) of UNESCO. In 1957 he founded with Fernand Braudel and Alexandre Koyré the Section of History of Science of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, which he initiated in 1964 as the successor of Koyré to 1983.

Shortly before his sudden death at the age of 89 years Taton was working on an edition of the writings Gaspard Monge, whose career and discoveries he had all his life devoted much of his research.

Honors

1975 René Taton was awarded the George Sarton Medal, the highest prestigious award for the History of Science, founded by George Sarton and Lawrence Joseph Henderson History of Science Society ( HSS). In 1997 he was awarded the Kenneth O. May Prize.

Works

Major works

Select by International Dictionary of Intellectual Historians ( IDIH )

• Pour continuer le calcul intégral ( collection de l' Abbé Moreux ), around 1945
• Histoire du calcul, Que sais - je?, 1946
• L' Histoire de la géometrie descriptive, 1954
• Causalités et accidents de la découverte scientifique, 1955
• La science contemporaine, 1961 [ Abeles, Florin ]
• Albert Flocon: La Perspective, PUF, coll - Que Sais -je, 1963?
• With Jean -Paul Flad: Le calcul mécanique, PUF, coll - Que Sais -je, 1963?
• Les origines de l' Académie royale des sciences, 1965
• Editor and co-author of: Histoire générale des Sciences, 4 volumes ( approximately 3270 pages), 1957-1964, reprint 1966 to 1983 and 1996 at the press Universitaire de France ( PUF).
• Derniers Écrits, 2000 ( compiled by R. Halleux )

More Releases

• Évariste Galois. In: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol 5, New York 1972, pp. 259-265.
• Les relations avec les d' Évariste Galois Mathématiciens de son temps. In: Revue d' histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 1.1 (1947 ), pp. 114-130.
• Évariste Galois and His Contemporaries. In: Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 15 ( 2) (1983 ), pp. 107-118.
• Sur les relations scientifiques d' Augustin Cauchy et d' Évariste Galois. In: Revue d' histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 24.2 (1971 ), pp. 123-148.
• Évariste Galois et ses biographes. De l' histoire aux légendes. In: Un parcours en Histoire des Mathématiques. Travaux et recherches. Nantes, 1993, pp. 155-172.
• La géométrie projective en France de Desargues à Poncelet, Paris 1951
• Other articles Gaspard Monge: Compilation of the Centre Alexandre Koyré

In 1951 he gave the mathematical works of Desargues out (press Universitaire de France).