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Birth of Jules Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare was born on April 29th, 1854, in Nancy, France to Eugenie and Leon Poincare. His father taught medicine at the University of Nancy, and his mother stayed at home taking care of him and his younger sister, Aline. -
First Publication
In October of 1874, Henri Poincare submitted his article to the Annals of Mathematics and it was published that same month. His article was titled "Démonstration nouvelle des propriétés de l’indicatrice d’une surface" -
Graduation from Univeristy of Paris
During Poincares school time, he discovered multiple complex functions and equations. Poincare wrote his doctoral dissertation on different ways of analyzing the properties of functions defined by differential equations. He specifically dove into their geometric properties and applied these properties to the motion of celestial bodies in our solar system. After finishing his doctoral dissertation, he received his Doctorate of Science in Mathematics in August of 1879. -
Louise Poulain d'Andecy
Poincare married Louise Poulain d'Andecy from the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire family, who would die after her husband in 1934. -
La science et l’hypothèse
Poincare publishes "La science et l’hypothèse" in 1902 which was translated into 23 different languages.
In this work, he writes about the philosophical understanding of mathematics as a synthetic, but also priori science. Poincare describes arithmetic as very intuitive instead of only logical. He also explains his brain's process while thinking. He explains this process as a combination of thoughts are created and then he consciously selects and validates. This work also inspired Einstein. -
Poincare Conjecture
Poincare created a conjecture which is defined as a mathematical statement that has not yet been rigorously proved. It was not solved until 1904 by Grigori Perlam. This was the first major conjecture in the topology field. The conjecture is: "Every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere."
This is an informational video explaining Poincare's Conjecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GItmC9lxeco -
Prediction of Gravitational Waves
Before he passed, one of his most famous theories was the prediction of gravitational waves, which weren't detected until over a century later in 2015. Albert Einstein also predicted the existence of gravitational waves a year later in 2016. -
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Leçons de mécanique céleste professées à la Sorbonne
He published volume 2 of 3 in 1905 titled "La valeur de la science". The last would be published in 1910. This second work talked about the relationship between logic and intuition when applied to math. He also mentions the similarities between math and physics and how they connect to each other. He goes into explaining different principles and laws such as Newton's Third Law, conservation of mass, entropy, and more. -
Death of Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare died on July 17, 1912 at the age of 58. Poincare underwent surgery for a prostate issue and ended up dying from an embolism in Paris, France. He was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, France.