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Emile Picard, 1856-1941

1942; Royal Society; Volume: 4; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsbm.1942.0012

2053-9118

Jacques Hadamard,

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

With the death of Picard on 12 December 1941 contemporary science has lost a great personality. Charles Emile Picard was born in Paris, 24 July 1856. During his high school studies at the Lycee Henri IV (which was then known as the Lycee Napoleon) he excelled in Greek translation, Latin verses, historical studies, but decidedly disliked geometry, which, from mere fear of punishment, he learnt by heart. On the contrary, when at the age of fifteen, in the class of ‘Seconde’, he became acquainted with algebra, he was at once strongly attracted, a tendency which he kept throughout his scientific life. Two years later, however, attending mathematical classes, he was no longer a geometry-hater; his masters rapidly began to form a high opinion of him, and they had to overcome his mother’s hesitations to let him pursue a scientific career. He, like almost every young Frenchman of those days with a gift for science, had to choose between the Ecole Poly technique—tending to lead to engineering careers—and the Ecole Normale Superieure, which is devoted to pure science. He decided on the latter, to which he was admitted with the first rank: it is said that this decision was taken after a moving visit to Pasteur, where the creator of bacteriology spoke of pure and disinterested science in such a noble and sublime way that his young hearer was definitely convinced. Emile Picard spent at the Ecole Normale Superieure the three normal years from 1874 to 1877, and then received an appointment for a supplementary year as an ‘agrege preparateur’, during the academic year 1877-1878. Meanwhile, he had gained the Doctor’s degree with a thesis on ‘Applications of linear complexes to the study of space curves and surfaces’.