This year, the “Jeudis des sciences” series will start on Thursday, 22 January 2015 with a lecture by Laurent Mazliak on the mathematician René Gateaux, as an introduction to the exhibition devoted to the scientist presented in January 2015 at the University of Luxembourg.

Laurent Mazliak will present the personality of René Gateaux, a young scientist killed during World War I at the age of 25, and the context of pre-war France where he studied. A singular aspect of Gateaux's short life is the research stay of one year he had in Rome to study with Vito Volterra. He also gave a vivid picture of the terrible beginning of the Great War.

Mazliak will not only explain in which circumstances Gateaux was killed in October 1914, but also follow the extraordinary path through which his works were preserved and extended by the mathematician Paul Lévy after the war.

“Les jeudis des sciences” lecture on René Gateaux is open to all, no need to register and will take place:
- on Thursday, 22 January 2015;
- at 5:30 p.m.;
- on Campus Kirchberg, rue Coudenhove-Kalergi, Luxembourg-Kirchberg, in B02 lecture hall.

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Exhibition on Campus Kirchberg

Laurent Mazliak studied mathematics at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris where he received his PhD in 1990. He is currently Maître de conférences at the Laboratoire de probabilités et modèles aléatoires at that same university and is specialising in probability and more particularly in stochastic optimisation.

After 2003, Laurent Mazliak became increasingly interested in the history of mathematics, especially that of the beginning of the 20th century and of the First World War.

In this context he organised, again with Rossana Tazzioli, the exhibition devoted to René Gateaux on Campus Kirchberg from 22 January to 8 February 2015.

Photo: René Gateaux © ENS