# Mathematician:René Frédéric Thom

## Mathematician

French mathematician who worked as a topologist, then moved on to aspects of what would later be called singularity theory.

One of the founders of catastrophe theory.

Introduced the concept of cobordism.

### Fields Medal

René Frédéric Thom was awarded a Fields Medal in $\text {1958}$ at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom:

For creating the theory of 'Cobordisme' which has, within the few years of its existence, led to the most penetrating insight into the topology of differentiable manifolds.

French

## History

• Born: 2 September 1923 in Montbéliard, Doubs, France
• Died: 25 October 2002 in Bures-sur-Yvette, France

## Publications

• 1952: Espaces fibrés en sphères et carrés de Steenrod (Ann. Sci. École Norm. Sup. Ser. 3 Vol. 69: pp. 109 – 182)
• 1954: Quelques propriétés globales des variétés différentiables (Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici Vol. 28: pp. 17 – 86)
• 1969: Ensembles et morphismes stratifiés (Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 75: pp. 240 – 284)
• 1972: Structural Stability and Morphogenesis
• 1990: Semio Physics: A Sketch