Prize Recipient

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris

Citation:

"For separate as well as joint work in proving the existence and uniqueness of solutions to Einstein's gravitational field equations for a variety of sources, and for formulating these equations so as to improve numerical solution procedures with relevance to realistic physical systems."

Background:

Born in Lille, France, Choquet-Bruhat studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and received her PhD in 1951 from the Universite de Paris. She was a researcher at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study for two years before joining the faculty of the Universite de Marseille in 1953. She has been a professor at the Universite de Paris since 1968, where she currently holds emeritus status. She has also held numerous visiting professorships at Cornell, Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, Cambridge University, Bonn, Rome, Florence, Turin and Fudan in Shanghai, China. Her current work is on developing the best hyperbolic formulation of evolution problems in numerical studies; and on lowering the smoothness of solutions of constraints in isolated bodies. She received France's prestigious commandeur de la legion d'honneur in 1999.

Selection Committee:

Martin Gutzwiller (Chair), Martin Einhorn (12/02), Charles Sommerfield (12/03), John Klauder (12/03)