Jean Dieudonné

Who was Jean Dieudonné?

Jean Alexandre Eugène Dieudonné was a French mathematician, notable for research in abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, and functional analysis, for close involvement with the Nicolas Bourbaki pseudonymous group and the Éléments de géométrie algébrique project of Alexander Grothendieck, and as a historian of mathematics, particularly in the fields of functional analysis and algebraic topology. His work on the classical groups, and on formal groups, introducing what now are called Dieudonné modules, had a major effect on those fields.

He was born and brought up in Lille, with a formative stay in England where he was introduced to algebra. In 1924 he was accepted for the École Normale Supérieure, where André Weil was a contemporary. He began working, conventionally enough, in complex analysis. In 1934 he was one of the group of normaliens convened by Weil, which would become 'Bourbaki'.