Bernard Morin | |
---|---|
Born | Shanghai, China | March 3, 1931
Died | March 12, 2018 Paris, France | (aged 87)
Nationality | French |
Alma mater |
École Normale Supérieure Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics Topology |
Institutions |
Institute for Advanced Study University of Strasbourg |
Doctoral advisor | René Thom |
Bernard Morin (French: [mɔʁɛ̃]; 3 March 1931 in Shanghai, China – 12 March 2018) [1] was a French mathematician, specifically a topologist.
Morin lost his sight at the age of six due to glaucoma, but his blindness did not prevent him from having a successful career in mathematics. [2] He received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. [3] [2]
Morin was a member of the group that first exhibited an eversion of the sphere, [4] i.e., a homotopy which starts with a sphere and ends with the same sphere but turned inside-out. He also discovered the Morin surface, which is a half-way model for the sphere eversion, and used it to prove a lower bound on the number of steps needed to turn a sphere inside out.
Morin discovered the first parametrization of Boy's surface (earlier used as a half-way model), in 1978. His graduate student François Apéry, in 1986, discovered another parametrization of Boy's surface, which conforms to the general method for parametrizing non-orientable surfaces. [5]
Morin worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Most of his career, though, he spent at the University of Strasbourg.
George K. Francis & Bernard Morin (1980) "Arnold Shapiro's Eversion of the Sphere", Mathematical Intelligencer 2(4):200–3.