Henri Padé

Who was Henri Padé?

Henri Eugène Padé was a French mathematician, who is now remembered mainly for his development of approximation techniques for functions using rational functions.

He was educated at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He then spent a year at Leipzig and Göttingen.

Back in France in 1890, he taught in Lille, while preparing his doctorate under Charles Hermite. His doctoral thesis described what is now known as the Padé approximant. He proceeded as assistant professor in Université Lille Nord de France, where he succeeded Émile Borel as a professor of rational mechanics at École centrale de Lille until 1902.

He then moved to Université de Poitiers in 1902; he became recteur of Académie de Besançon and Dijon in 1923. He retired as Recteur of Académie de Aix-Marseilles in 1934.