PAINLEVÉ

FRANCE (see also List of Individuals)

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5.12.1863 Paris/F - 29.10.1933 Paris/F

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Paul Painlevé received education in mathematics at Ecole Normale Supérieure, with a diploma in 1883 and the PhD title in 1886. He started lecturing rational mechanics at University of Lille in 1887 and returned to Paris five years later as a Lecturer at Faculté des Sciences. He was then also an assistant of Maurice Lévy (1838-1910) at Collège de France and was appointed professor of general mathematics in 1903 at Faculté des Sciences, Paris. From 1909, Painlevé was an aviation professor at the Ecole Supérieure d'Aéronautique and three years later also of rational mechanics. From 1923 he lectured in addition fluid mechanics at Ecole Polytechnique. In parallel, Painlevé was politically involved, first as departmental deputy, then as minister of the public instruction, as war minister during World War I, and finally as minister of aviation. He thus was one of the most important individuals of both the scientific and the political life in France. His distinctions were many, such as Member of Académie des Sciences, Paris, which he presided over in 1918. He was given a state funeral and his ashes are presently at the Panthéon, Paris.

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As a mathematician, Painlevé considered questions in their greatest generality. After his first works concerning rational transformations of algebraic curves and surfaces, he was remarkably successful in the study of singular points, and singularities, which are often special solutions in problems of hydrodynamics. Transitional flows from subto super-critical state both in hydrodynamics and aerodynamics involve a change from the basic governing equations, and singular point analyses define the state where these two flow types have their origin. The results of these studies by Painlevé are applicable to the equations of analytical mechanics. Painlevé was also an aviation admirer and presented a book on early aviation together with Borel. His two volumes On the resistance of inviscid fluid flows from 1930 are a classical text in hydrodynamics.

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_{Charle, C., Telkes, E. (1989). Painlevé, Paul-Prudent. Les professeurs de la Faculté des Sciences de Paris 1901-1939: 212-214. CNRS: Paris.}

_{Denjoy, A. (1934). Paul Painlevé. Annales de l'Université de Paris 9(1): 1-22. P}

_{Félix, L. (1982). Painlevé. Dictionary of scientific biography 10: 274-276. Scribner's: New York. Painlevé, P., Borel, E. (1910). L'aviation. Alcan: Paris.}

_{Painlevé, P.P. (1930). Leçons sur la résistance des fluides non-visqueux. Gauthier-Villars: Paris. Poggendorff, J.C. (1904). Painlevé, Paul. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 4:}

_{1111-1112; 5: 935; 6: 1939. Verlag Chemie: Leipzig, with bibliography.}