Camille Jordan

Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan (Lyon, January 5, 1838 - Paris, January 22, 1922) was a French mathematician, known as much for his work on group theory as for his influential Course of analysis (Cours d'analyse).

Biography

He studied at the Polytechnic School (class of 1855). He was a mining engineer and later worked as an examiner at the same school. In 1876 he became a professor at the College of France, replacing Joseph Liouville.

His name is associated with a certain number of fundamental results:

• Jordan's curve theorem: a topological result collected in complex analysis.
• Jordan's canonical shape in linear algebra.
• The Jordan-Holder theorem, which is the basic result of a series of compositions.

Jordan's work had a substantial impact on the introduction of Galois theory into mainstream thought. He also investigated the Mathieu groups, the first examples of sporadic groups. His Treatise on Substitutions (Traité des substitutions) on group permutations was published in 1870.

On April 4, 1881, he was elected a member of the Academy of Science.

From 1885 to 1921 he directed the «Journal of pure and applied mathematics» (Journal de mathèmatiques pures et apliqués), founded by Liouville.