Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel (7 January 1871 – 3 February 1956) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

.

Borel was born in Saint-Affrique

Saint-Affrique

Saint-Affrique is a commune in the Aveyron department in southern France.-History:Saint-Affrique grew in the 6th century around the tomb of St. Africain, bishop of Comminges. In the 12th century a fortress was built on the neighboring rock of Caylus. The possession of Saint-Affrique was vigorously...

, Aveyron

Aveyron

Aveyron is a département in southern France named after the Aveyron River.- History :Aveyron is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790....

. Along with René-Louis Baire

René-Louis Baire

René-Louis Baire was a French mathematician most famous for his Baire category theorem, which helped to generalize and prove future theorems...

 and Henri Lebesgue

Henri Lebesgue

Henri Léon Lebesgue was a French mathematician most famous for his theory of integration, which was a generalization of the seventeenth century concept of integration—summing the area between an axis and the curve of a function defined for that axis...

, he was among the pioneers of measure theory

Measure (mathematics)

In mathematical analysis, a measure on a set is a systematic way to assign to each suitable subset a number, intuitively interpreted as the size of the subset. In this sense, a measure is a generalization of the concepts of length, area, and volume...

 and its application to probability theory

Probability theory

Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with analysis of random phenomena. The central objects of probability theory are random variables, stochastic processes, and events: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic events or measured quantities that may either be single...

. The concept of a Borel set

Borel set

In mathematics, a Borel set is any set in a topological space that can be formed from open sets through the operations of countable union, countable intersection, and relative complement...

 is named in his honor. One of his books on probability introduced the amusing thought experiment

Thought experiment

A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...

 that entered popular culture under the name infinite monkey theorem

Infinite monkey theorem

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare....

 or the like. He also published a series of papers (1921-27) that first defined games of strategy.

In 1913 and 1914 he bridged the gap between hyperbolic geometry

Hyperbolic geometry

In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry, meaning that the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is replaced...

 and special relativity

Special relativity

Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...

 with expository work.

In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s he was active in politics. In 1922 he founded ISUP, the oldest French school for Statistics. From 1924 to 1936, he was a member of the French National Assembly

French National Assembly

The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

. In 1925, he was
Minister of Marine. During the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he was a member of the French Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

.

Borel died in Paris in 1956.

Besides the Centre Émile Borel at the Institut Henri Poincaré

Institut Henri Poincaré

The Institut Henri Poincaré is a mathematical institute in Paris which has established itself over its eighty year history as an important meeting place for French and international mathematicians and theoretical physicists...

 in Paris
and a crater on the Moon

Borel (crater)

Borel is a tiny lunar impact crater located in the southeast part of Mare Serenitatis. To the northeast is the crater Le Monnier. Borel was previously identified as Le Monnier C before being named by the IAU....

, the following mathematical notions are named after him:

Articles

"La science est-elle responsable de la crise mondiale?", Scientia : rivista internazionale di sintesi scientifica, 51, 1932, pp. 99-106. "La science dans une societe socialiste", Scientia : rivista internazionale di sintesi scientifica, 31, 1922, pp. 223-228. "Le continu mathematique et le continu physique", Rivista di scienza, 6, 1909, pp. 21-35.

External links

• Émile Borel in the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  Mathematics Genealogy Project
  The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians. As of September, 2010, it contained information on approximately 145,000 mathematical scientists who contribute to "research-level mathematics"...