Henri Cartan

Henri Paul Cartan was a French mathematician, born on 8 July 1904, who died on 13 August 2008 at the age of 104 and made substantial contributions to algebraic topology. He was the son of the mathematician Élie Cartan, began studying mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in 1923 and received a doctorate in 1928 with a thesis supervised by Paul Montel. He taught at Caen, Lille and Strasbourg before returning to Paris in 1940, and from 1969 until his retirement in 1975 he was professor at Paris-Sud University. He was president of the Société mathématique de France and, from 1967 to 1970, president of the International Mathematics Union, and he received the Wolf Prize in 1980. During the 1970s and 1980s he used his influence to help obtain the release of imprisoned dissident mathematicians.