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Cédric Villani

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Cédric Villani
Villani in 2015
Member of theNational Assembly
forEssonne's5thconstituency
In office
21 June 2017 – 21 June 2022
Preceded byMaud Olivier
Succeeded byPaul Midy
Personal details
Born(1973-10-05)5 October 1973(age 50)
Brive-la-Gaillarde,France[1]
NationalityFrench
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
Paris Dauphine University
Known forBoltzmann equation
Kinetic theory
Landau damping
Transportation theory
Otto–Villani theorem
AwardsEMS Prize(2008)
Fermat Prize(2009)
Henri Poincaré Prize(2009)
Fields Medal(2010)
Joseph L. Doob Prize(2014)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsInstitut Henri Poincaré,Sorbonne University
University of Lyon
Institut Camille-Jordan
ThesisContribution à l'étude mathématique des équations de Boltzmann et de Landau en théorie cinétique des gaz et des plasmas(1998)
Doctoral advisorPierre-Louis Lions
Doctoral studentsAlessio Figalli
Clément Mouhot
Websitecedricvillani.org
Political partyEcology Generation(2020–present)
Other political
affiliations		Ecology Democracy Solidarity(2020)
LREM(2017–2020)

Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani(French:[se.dʁikpa.tʁistje.ʁivi.la.ni];born 5 October 1973) is a Frenchpolitician and mathematicianworking primarily onpartial differential equations,Riemannian geometryandmathematical physics.He was awarded theFields Medalin 2010, and he was the director ofSorbonne University'sInstitut Henri Poincaréfrom 2009 to 2017. As of September 2022, he is a professor atInstitut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

Villani has given two lectures at theRoyal Institution,the first titled 'Birth of a Theorem'.[2]The English translation of his bookThéorème vivant(Living Theorem) has the same title. In the book he describes the links between his research onkinetic theoryand the one of the mathematicianCarlo Cercignani:Villani, in fact, proved the so-called Cercignani's conjecture.

His second lecture at the Royal Institution is titled 'The Extraordinary Theorems ofJohn Nash'.[3]

Villani was elected as the deputy forEssonne's 5th constituencyin theNational Assembly,the lower house of theFrench Parliament,during the2017 legislative election.[4]He was elected as a member ofLa République En Marche!(LREM), but in May 2020 left the party to form a new party,Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity(EDS).[5][6]Following the dissolution of EDS, Villani joinedEcology Generation,and ran for re-election under the banner of theNUPES.[7]He was elected vice president of the FrenchParliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choicesin July 2017.

Helost his seatin the2022 French legislative electiontoLa Republique En Marche!candidatePaul Midyby 19 votes.[8]

Biography

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After attending theLycée Louis-le-Grand,Villani was admitted at theÉcole Normale Supérieurein Paris and studied there from 1992 to 1996, after which he was appointed anagrégé préparateurat the same school.[9]He received his doctorate atParis Dauphine Universityin 1998, under the supervision ofPierre-Louis Lions,and became professor at theÉcole normale supérieure de Lyonin 2000. He is now professor at theUniversity of Lyon.He was director of theInstitut Henri Poincaréin Paris from 2009 to 2017.[10][11]

He has held various visiting positions atGeorgia Tech(Fall 1999), theUniversity of California, Berkeley(Spring 2004), and theInstitute for Advanced Study,Princeton(Spring 2009).[12]

On 19 October 2014, in the context of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy's inauguralAlbertinefestival, Villani appeared in conversation with theNobel Prizewinning mathematicianJohn F. Nash, Jr.[13]

Several months later, on 23 May 2015, Nash, along with his wife, Alicia died in a car crash. Speaking at theHay Festival,just days after Nash's death, Villani announced that Nash told Villani, in Norway on May 20, that he had found a 'replacement equation' forEinstein's theory of relativity.[14]

Mathematical work

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Villani has worked on the theory ofpartial differential equationsinvolved instatistical mechanics,specifically theBoltzmann equation,where, with Laurent Desvillettes, he was the first to prove how quickly convergence occurs for initial values not near equilibrium.[11]He has written with Giuseppe Toscani on this subject. WithClément Mouhot,he has worked on nonlinearLandau damping.[15]He has worked on the theory ofoptimal transportand its applications to differential geometry, and withJohn Lotthas defined a notion of boundedRicci curvaturefor general measured length spaces.[16]He also served on the Mathematical Sciences jury for theInfosys Prizein 2015 and 2016.

Villani received the Fields Medal for his work onLandau dampingand theBoltzmann equation.[11]He described the development of his theorem in his autobiographical bookThéorème vivant(2012), published inEnglish translationasBirth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure(2015).[17][18]He gave aTED talkat the 2016 conference in Vancouver.[19]

Political career

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Cédric Villani at a public meeting of En Marche in Tokyo

In 2017, it was announced that Villani had been selected as a candidate forEn Marche!(LREM) in the2017 French legislative election,forEssonne's 5th constituency.[20][21]In the first round of voting, Villani obtained 47% of the vote and was thus strongly placed for the second round[22]which he won with 69.36% of the vote.[23]

In 2019, Villani applied to be selected to lead the LREM candidate slate forthe 2020 Paris election.By July 2019, he was one of three LREM candidates, alldeputies in theNational Assembly,still seeking the position; the other two wereBenjamin Griveaux(who had been thegovernment spokesperson) andHugues Renson(who had been the vice-president of the National Assembly). On 10 July, the nomination committee picked Griveaux.[24]On 4 September, Villani officially announced his candidacy for the municipal election.[25]

Other activities

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  • France China Foundation, former Member of the Strategic Committee[26]

Awards and honours

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Diplomas, titles and awards

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Extra-academic distinctions

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In 2020, a new spider species of the familyAraneidae,Araniella villanii,was named after him.[31][32]

Selected writings

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  • Limites hydrodynamiques de l'équation de Boltzmann,Séminaire Bourbaki, June 2001;Astérisquevol. 282, 2002.
  • A Review of Mathematical Topics in Collisional Kinetic Theory, inHandbook of Mathematical Fluid Dynamics,edited byS. Friedlanderand D. Serre, vol. 1, Elsevier, 2002,ISBN978-0-444-50330-5.doi:10.1016/S1874-5792(02)80004-0.
  • Topics in Optimal Transportation,volume 58 ofGraduate Studies in Mathematics,American Mathematical Society, 2003,ISBN978-0-8218-3312-4.[33]
  • Optimal transportation, dissipative PDE's and functional inequalities, pp. 53–89 inOptimal Transportation and Applications,edited byL. A. Caffarelliand S. Salsa, volume 1813 ofLecture Notes in Mathematics,Springer, 2003,ISBN978-3-540-40192-6.
  • Cercignani's conjecture is sometimes true and always almost true,Communications in Mathematical Physics,vol. 234, No. 3 (March 2003), pp. 455–490,doi:10.1007/s00220-002-0777-1.
  • On the trend to global equilibrium for spatially inhomogeneous kinetic systems: the Boltzmann equation (with Laurent Desvillettes),Inventiones Mathematicae,vol. 159, #2 (2005), pp. 245–316,doi:10.1007/s00222-004-0389-9.
  • Mathematics of Granular Materials,Journal of Statistical Physics,vol. 124, #2–4 (July/August 2006), pp. 781–822,doi:10.1007/s10955-006-9038-6.
  • Optimal transport, old and new,volume 338 ofGrundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften,Springer, 2009,ISBN978-3-540-71049-3.
  • Ricci curvature for metric-measure spaces via optimal transport(with John Lott),Annals of Mathematicsvol. 169, No. 3 (2009), pp. 903–991.
  • Hypocoercivity,volume 202, No. 950 ofMemoirs of the American Mathematical Society,2009,ISBN978-0-8218-4498-4.
  • Clément Mouhot; Cédric Villani (2009). "On Landau damping".Acta Mathematica.207:29–201.arXiv:0904.2760.doi:10.1007/s11511-011-0068-9.S2CID115179279.
  • Théorème vivant,Bernard Grasset, Paris 2012[34]
  • Les Coulisses de la création,Flammarion, Paris 2015 (with composer and pianistKarol Beffa)
  • Freedom in Mathematics,Springer India, 2016 (withPierre Cartier,Jean Dhombres, Gerhard Heinzmann),ISBN978-81-322-2786-1.Translation from the French language edition:Mathématiques en liberté,La Ville Brûle, Montreuil 2012,ISBN978-23-601-2026-0.
  • Birth of a Theorem,Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2015; translated by Malcolm DeBevoise.
  • De mémoire vive,Une histoire de l'aventure numérique, Philippe Dewost, Cédric Villani, Éditions Première Partie, 2022,ISBN978-2-36526-252-1.

References

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  1. ^Sylvain Guilbaud; Antoine Walraet. "Cédric Villani",Encyclopædia Universalis.
  2. ^Villani, Cédric (22 April 2015)."Birth of a Theorem".The Royal Institution.Archivedfrom the original on 15 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  3. ^Villani, Cédric (2 November 2016)."The Extraordinary Theorems of John Nash".The Royal Institution.Archivedfrom the original on 15 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  4. ^Emmanuel Macron team announces candidates for France's June parliamentary election,ABC News Online,12 May 2017.
  5. ^"Macron loses majority as defectors form new party".BBC News.19 May 2020.Retrieved20 May2020.
  6. ^"Macron's party loses outright majority in French parliament".www.thelocal.fr.19 May 2020.Retrieved20 May2020.
  7. ^Derestiat, Anthony (23 May 2022)."Legislative: in Ulis, Cédric Villani defends his new label Nupes".Liberation.Retrieved6 June2022.
  8. ^l'Intérieur, Ministère de."Résultats des élections législatives 2022".French Government(in French).Retrieved24 September2022.
  9. ^Villani, Cédric."Biography".Archived fromthe originalon 11 April 2019.Retrieved11 April2019.
  10. ^Mathematics Genealogy Project – Cédric Villani.Accessed on line 20 August 2010.
  11. ^abc"Fields Medal – Cédric Villani".Archived fromthe originalon 29 August 2010.Retrieved20 August2010.
  12. ^"Curriculum Vitae (Cédric Villani)"(PDF).cedricvillani.org.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 23 June 2016.Retrieved24 May2017.
  13. ^Albertine Books (26 September 2014)."Festival Albertine".Albertine Books.
  14. ^Kaye, Yasmin (30 May 2015)."A Beautiful Mind's John Nash 'replaced' Einstein's theory of relativity just before his death".International Business Times.
  15. ^Clément Mouhot; Cédric Villani (2010). "Landau damping".Journal of Mathematical Physics.51(15204): 015204.arXiv:0905.2167.Bibcode:2010JMP....51a5204M.doi:10.1063/1.3285283.S2CID14883238.
  16. ^John Lott; Cedric Villani (2004). "Ricci curvature for metric-measure spaces via optimal transport".arXiv:math/0412127.
  17. ^Ashbacher, Charles (7 May 2015)."Review ofBirth of a Theoremby Cédric Villani ".MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America.
  18. ^Alexander, Amir(4 March 2015)."Mathematics: Groping in the dark for glimpses of beauty (joint review ofBirth of a Theoremby Cédric Villani andMathematics without Apologiesby Michael Harris) ".Nature.519(7541): 31–32.doi:10.1038/519031a.(SeeMichael Harris.)
  19. ^"Cédric Villani: What's so sexy about math?".TED.6 June 2016.Retrieved8 June2016.
  20. ^"France's Macron announces gender equal list of political outsiders".BBC News.11 May 2017.Retrieved11 May2017.
  21. ^"Communiqué de presse – Liste des investis aux élections législatives | En Marche!".En Marche!.Retrieved11 May2017.
  22. ^"Cédric Villani:" L'idée, c'est d'avoir des compétences variées "".Libération.15 June 2017. Archived fromthe originalon 17 June 2017.Retrieved18 June2017.
  23. ^l'Intérieur, Ministère de."Elections législatives 2017".elections.interieur.gouv.fr.Retrieved19 June2017.
  24. ^Cosnard, Denis (10 July 2019)."Elections municipales à Paris: Benjamin Griveaux choisi pour représenter LRM".Le Monde(in French).Retrieved3 August2019.
  25. ^à 19h11, Par R. Bx Le 4 septembre 2019; À 23h06, Modifié Le 4 Septembre 2019 (4 September 2019)."Municipales: Cédric Villani officialise sa candidature à la mairie de Paris".leparisien.fr(in French).Retrieved5 September2019.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  26. ^"France China Foundation Strategic Committee".Archived fromthe originalon 10 June 2017.
  27. ^Sanz-Solé, M.; Soria, J.; Varona, J. L.; Verdera, J., eds. (2007)."Hypocoercive diffusion operatorsby Cédric Villani "(PDF).Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians Madrid, August 22–30, 2006.Vol. III. European Mathematical Society. pp. 473–498.ISBN978-3-03719-022-7.
  28. ^Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectures – No. 86, January 2013, San Diego, CA; Cédric VillaniAccessed on line 20 May 2015.
  29. ^Joseph L. Doob Prize – Most Recent Prize: 2014Accessed on line 20 May 2015.
  30. ^Cédric Villani, new member of the French Academy of ScienceAccessed on line 20 May 2015.
  31. ^"Newly discovered neon-green spider named after the 'Lady Gaga of mathematics'".Live Science.29 January 2020.
  32. ^Zamani, Alireza; Marusik, Yuri M.; Šestáková, Anna (22 January 2020)."On Araniella and Neoscona (Araneae, Araneidae) of the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia".ZooKeys(906): 13–40.doi:10.3897/zookeys.906.47978.PMC6989643.PMID32021555.
  33. ^Figalli, Alessio(2010)."Book Review ofOptimal transport: Old and newby Cédric Villani ".Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.47(4): 723.doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-10-01285-1.
  34. ^Gouvêa, Fernando Q. (15 December 2013)."Review ofThéorème Vivantby Cédric Villani ".MAA Reviews, Mathematical Association of America.
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See also

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