Picard, Émile

(1856-1941)

   mathematician Among the numerous studies that Émile Picard, who was born and educated in Paris, began were those involving uniform and multiform analytical functions and the functions of several complex variables. His theorem (1879), dealing with normal grouping, constitutes the "Picard Cycle," which makes a classification of regular analytical functions. He also worked with differential linear equations (1883) and simple integrals attached to algebraic surfaces (1885), and helped to create algebraic geometry. He discovered the method of successive approximations applied to differential equations (1890), and studied the method, used today in electronics, that consists of the replacement of differential equations by those with finite differences (1899). Picard was named to the Academy of Sciences in 1889 and to the académie FRANÇAISE in 1924.