Cédric Villani

Cédric Villani
Born	5 October 1973 (1973-10-05) (age 38) Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
Residence	Paris, France
Nationality	France
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Institut Camille Jordan Institut Henri Poincaré
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure
Doctoral advisor	Pierre-Louis Lions
Known for	Boltzmann equation Kinetic theory Transportation theory
Notable awards	Fermat Prize (2009) EMS Prize (2008) Herbrand Prize (2007) Fields Medal (2010)

Cédric Villani (born 5 October 1973, Brive-la-Gaillarde, Corrèze) is a French mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010.

Biography

After attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Villani studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1992 to 1996, where he was appointed an assistant professor. He received his doctorate at Paris Dauphine University in 1998, under the supervision of Pierre-Louis Lions, and became professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 2000. He is now professor at Lyon University. He has been the director of Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris since 2009.^[1][2]

Work

Villani has worked on the theory of partial differential equations involved in statistical mechanics, specifically the Boltzmann equation, where, with Laurent Desvillettes, he was the first to prove how fast convergence occurred for initial values not near equilibrium.^[2] He has also written with Giuseppe Toscani on this subject. With Clément Mouhot, he has also worked on nonlinear Landau damping.^[3] He has worked on the theory of optimal transport and its applications to differential geometry, and with John Lott has defined a notion of bounded Ricci curvature for general measured length spaces.^[4] He received the Fields Medal for his work on Landau damping and the Boltzmann equation.^[2]

Awards

• Jacques Herbrand Prize (French Academy of Sciences) (2007)
• Prize of the European Mathematical Society (2008)
• Fermat Prize (2009)
• Henri Poincaré Prize (2009)
• Fields Medal (2010)^[2]

Selected writings

• Limites hydrodynamiques de l'équation de Boltzmann, Séminaire Bourbaki, June 2001; Astérisque vol. 282, 2002.
• A Review of Mathematical Topics in Collisional Kinetic Theory, in Handbook of Mathematical Fluid Dynamics, edited by S. Friedlander and D. Serre, vol. 1, Elsevier, 2002, ISBN 9780444503305. doi:10.1016/S1874-5792(02)80004-0.
• Topics in Optimal Transportation, volume 58 of Graduate studies in mathematics, American Mathematical Society, 2003, ISBN 9780821833124.
• Optimal transportation, dissipative PDE’s and functional inequalities, pp. 53–89 in Optimal Transportation and Applications, edited by L. A. Caffarelli and S. Salsa, volume 1813 of Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Springer, 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-40192-6.
• Cercignani's conjecture is sometimes true and always almost true, Communications in Mathematical Physics, vol. 234, #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 of Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, Springer, 2009, ISBN 9783540710493.
• Ricci curvature for metric-measure spaces via optimal transport (with John Lott), Annals of Mathematics vol. 169, #3 (2009), pp. 903–991.
• Hypocoercivity, volume 202, #950 of Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, 2009, ISBN 9780821844984.
• Clément Mouhot; Cédric Villani (2009). "On Landau damping". arXiv:0904.2760 [math.AP]. 

References

1. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project - Cédric Villani. Accessed on line August 20, 2010.
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Fields Medal – Cédric Villani. Accessed on line August 20, 2010.
3. ^ Clément Mouhot; Cédric Villani (2010). "Landau damping". Journal of Mathematical Physics 51 (15204): 015204. arXiv:0905.2167. doi:10.1063/1.3285283. 
4. ^ John Lott; Cedric Villani (2004). "Ricci curvature for metric-measure spaces via optimal transport". arXiv:math/0412127 [math.DG]. 

External links

• Cédric Villani's home page
• Cédric Villani at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

Persondata
Name	Villani, Cedric
Alternative names
Short description	French mathematician
Date of birth	1973-10-5
Place of birth	Brive-la-Gaillarde, France
Date of death
Place of death