Schwartz, Laurent-Moise

▪ 2003

      French mathematician (b. March 5, 1915, Paris, France—d. July 4, 2002, Paris), was awarded the Fields Medal in 1950 for his work on the theory of distributions. In the 1920s physicist Paul Dirac introduced his “delta function” to simplify the mathematical treatment of certain point items—that is, actions highly localized, or “spiked,” in space or time (e.g., point charges, masses, and spins)—in quantum mechanical problems. In a series of papers beginning in 1945, Schwartz developed a theory of generalized functions, or distributions, that rigorously brought the Dirac delta function within the mathematical framework of functional analysis. His most significant work, Théorie des distributions, first published in 1950–51, elaborated his work. Schwartz studied mathematics at the École Normale Superieure (later part of the Universities of Paris). He taught at the Universities of Clermont-Ferrand (1942–44), Grenoble (1944–45), and Nancy (1945–52) and at the Faculty of Science in Paris (1953–83). From 1959 he also served as a professor of analysis at the École Polytechnique (EP). Schwartz stood as a Trotskyist in the 1945 and 1946 general elections; although he ended his political allegiance with Trotskyism in 1947, he was barred from the U.S. and was unable to collect his Fields Medal in person. A signatory of the “Manifeste des 121,” which endorsed the moral right of French youth who refused to fight against Algerian independence, Schwartz was fired from the EP in 1960 for his stand on Algeria, but he returned to work in 1963. He was also outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Schwartz's other books included Application des distributions a l'étude de particules élémentaires en mécanique quantique rélativiste (1969; Application of Distributions to the Theory of Elementary Particles in Quantum Mechanics, 1968) and an autobiography, Un Mathematicien aux prises avec le siècle (1997; A Mathematician Grappling with His Century, 2001). He was elected to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1975.

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