Paul Émile Appell

Paul Émile Appell was a French mathematician born in Strasbourg in 1855 who became Rector of the University of Paris. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1873, was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1892 and became a professor at the École Centrale Paris in 1895. He was Dean of the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris from 1903 to 1920 and Rector from 1920 to 1925, and he served as president of the Société astronomique de France from 1919 to 1921. Appell polynomials and Appell's equations of motion are named after him. His daughter Marguerite, who married the mathematician Émile Borel, became a novelist under the pen name Camille Marbo.