Jacqueline Ferrand and Her Oeuvre

摘要

Jacqueline Ferrand was born in Alès, in the south of France, one hundred years ago, in 1918. At the time, she was one of the very few women ever admitted to the école Normale Supérieure (ENS), and she succeeded at the (male) agrégation in 1939. She immediately won a teaching assistant position at école Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles. The director of the school, Mrs. Cotton, was convinced that women should nourish the same intellectual ambition as men, and she reckoned that this brilliant young mathematician would raise the level of teaching at Jeunes Filles to the same level as the ENS. Several people witnessed the energy Jacqueline Ferrand devoted to this task despite poor material conditions. With the same energy, she began to do research, under Arnaud Denjoy's supervision from afar. After her thesis defense, on June 12, 1942, she was awarded the Girbal Barral Prize in 1943 and the Fondation Peccot Prize in 1946. Her career developed quickly: assistant professor in Bordeaux in 1943, professor in Caen in 1945, in Lille in 1948, in Paris from 1956 until her retirement in 1984.