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The second of November 2006 Adrien Douady passed away and the mathematical
community lost a great man. He contributed much in an obvious way to
mathematics and in particular the field of holomorphic dynamics where he
obtained many important results. He also contributed in a more subtle way
by planting ideas in the people around him, and helping them develop. He
led people to cooperate and share ideas and by his example and presence
knit the whole holomorphic dynamics community together.
Adrien Douady was much more than a mathematician. He had many talents. The thing that most stand out to me when I think about Adrien is the joy of living that he radiated so strongly that it left nobody around him unaffected. Where ever he went there was color, song and laughter. He is missed, and will be so for a long time to come. Due to increased spam, we regret to close the guestbook and replace it by an archived static page as of January 20, 2007. Christian Henriksen maintains a collection of Pictures with Adrien Douady.
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| Guestbook entry of Alexandre MOATTI, on 23.12.2006 | |
| J'avais connu Adrien Douady chez lui en 1977 quand j'étais dans la classe de son fils Raphaël au lycée Louis-le-Grand à Paris. Je l'ai retrouvé à travers ses oeuvres, quand je me suis mis à la vulgarisation grand public des sciences en 2004: notamment son article très abordable et lumineux dans le livre Seuil Points Sciences (2003) "Chaos et déterminisme". |
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| Guestbook entry of Rona Epstein, on 17.11.2006 | |
| Adrien Douady was a person who no one who met him could ever forget. He lived life to the full, he was passionate, interesting, interested and generous. He loved people, and song, laughter, mathematics, music, his friends and his family. He and his wife Regine, also a mathematician, had an open house, where people from all over the world found the warmest of welcomes, friendship, stimulation, good food (cooked by Regine), French songs, many of them bawdy, (sung by Adrien), poetry he declaimed, by heart, in vast quantities. He leaves a space no one can fill. | |
| Guestbook entry of Rona Epstein, on 17.11.2006 | |
| Adrien Douady was a person who no one who met him could ever forget. He lived life to the full, he was passionate, interesting, interested and generous. He loved people, and song, laughter, mathematics, music, his friends and his family. He and his wife Regine, also a mathematician, had an open house, where people from all over the world found the warmest of welcomes, friendship, stimulation, good food (cooked by Regine), French songs, many of them bawdy, (sung by Adrien), poetry he declaimed, by heart, in vast quantities. He leaves a space no one can fill. | |
| Guestbook entry of Raphael Douady, on 12.11.2006 | |
| This text (sorry in French) appeared in le Monde: Adrien Douady Mathématicien hors normes et vulgarisateur de talent Le mathématicien français Adrien Douady s'est noyé près de Saint-Raphaël (Var), jeudi 2 novembre, à l'âge de 71 ans. Ce scientifique atypique, auquel une barbe échevelée sous un haut front dégarni donnait l'aura d'un Soljenitsyne, était " une grande figure, à plus d'un titre, des mathématiques " ; ainsi lui rend hommage Michel Broué, directeur de l'Institut Henri-Poincaré. " Il n'a pas publié énormément d'articles, mais tous étonnants, et a surtout inspiré un nombre considérable de spécialistes de disciplines très différentes ", ajoute Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, directeur de l'Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHES). Né le 25 septembre 1935, fils de médecin - on doit à son père, le Dr Daniel Douady, l'hygiène scolaire et l'éradication de la tuberculose en France -, petit-fils de " normaliens ", Adrien Douady, lui-même normalien, avait été chercheur au CNRS puis avait enseigné à l'université de Nice, avant de devenir professeur à l'Ecole normale supérieure et professeur émérite à l'université de Paris-Sud à Orsay. Sous l'impulsion de Jean Dieudonné, il était devenu membre, de 1959 à 1985, du célèbre groupe Bourbaki, association de mathématiciens qui a marqué la vie de cette discipline par son encyclopédie et son séminaire, toujours à la pointe des développements importants. Ses vagabondages mathématiques, qui le ramenaient toujours aux nombres complexes, ont été très féconds : ses travaux en géométrie analytique complexe - dont sa thèse soutenue en 1965 sous la direction d'Henri Cartan -, en systèmes dynamiques et sur la théorie des ensembles fractals, ont eu un impact considérable dans ces domaines. Conférencier invité, à plusieurs reprises, au Congrès international des mathématiciens - dont la première fois à Moscou en 1966, à l'âge de 31 ans -, collaborateur de nombreux instituts et universités de par le monde, il avait reçu en 1989 le prix Ampère de l'Académie des sciences, dont il était devenu membre correspondant en 1997. Adrien Douady aura marqué tous ceux qui l'ont connu par sa largesse d'esprit, sa curiosité permanente, sa disponibilité vis-à-vis de ses " thésards ", sa proximité, sa chaleur, sa maison toujours ouverte. Son esprit scientifique dépassait largement le strict cadre des mathématiques, pour toucher à la physique, à la biologie ou à l'astronomie. C'était aussi un pédagogue hors de pair et un vulgarisateur de talent. Deux films lui ont été consacrés : Douady Adrien, mathématicien, de Jacques Brissot et Monique Sicard, et La Dynamique du lapin, de François Tisseyre. Pierre Le Hir |
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| Guestbook entry of Adam Epstein, on 11.11.2006 | |
| My first encounter with Adrien was just over 20 years ago. He had come to give a series of lectures at Boston University. One of these concerned the asymptotic shape of the 'elephants' marching into the cusp of the Mandelbrot Set. This talk nodoubt contributed enormously to my subsequent interest in parabolic bifurcations. I followed very little, but it was all so delightfully whimsical - the pictures, the terminology, Adrien's grin and garb. A year later he gave a similar series of talks at a Cornell conference. These I followed somewhat better, and I wonder if I might still have my notes somewhere. Back then I took scrupulous notes of every lecture on those then rare occasions when the subject matter was holomorphic dynamics - there were few published papers, and as yet no Arxiv, so for someone not directly connected to Hamal or Adrien (or yet connected to Dennis, Jack and Misha), the very existence of certain preprints, let alone their acquisition, was highly nontrivial. Later on, as graduate school gave way to postdocs, I was drawn closer the group centered around Adrien. There were various conferences at Luminy, Stony Brook, Orsay, and Hillerod. There (Hillerod) someone's 3 year-old daughter rather matter-of-factly mistook him for Santa Claus. So heartwarming. I never was able to get as close to him as I'd have liked to, but there were dinners in his home, a bottle of wine poured over my head in a climax of song, and a dodgy cash handover in the corner of the Luxembourg Metro Station. These, especially the last, were very special moments, and I don't think they are the typical experiences of others in my cohort who work in different subjects. For twenty years his personality was the background of so many holomorphic dynamics conferences - those he attended, and those he had to miss. Now he will be missing the rest of them, but I don't think this background presence will fade any time soon. I am so happy for last Spring's conference about positive measure Julia sets. He must have been so proud that two of his students (dis)/proved one of his favorite and longest running conjectures, and that they received a prize for that achievement, so very very recently. I wish my French had been good enough for me to follow all the memorial speaches at the funeral service. His importance to mathematics so clearly transcended holomorphic dynamics. Someday, as I have been meaning to for years, I will read "Platitude et Privilege". | |
| Guestbook entry of Suzanne Lynch Hruska, on 10.11.2006 | |
| Though I only knew Adrien for the last few years of his life, he has been an example to me, and I suspect to many others, of how to live life to the fullest. My entry in this guestbook is long, those of you who know me should't be surprised. I first met Adrien in Ithaca, NY, while a graduate student at Cornell, during 1997--2002. I recall walking into the math lounge and seeing a very fuzzy man (his quilted flannel shirts were unbuttoned halfway down his chest), with corduroy pants, large boots, a gigantic orange coat and sparking eyes, pacing around talking to Hubbard. We were introduced, and though he mostly spoke in English, at first I couldn't understand a word he said. But soon I caught on to his rhythm. I admired Adrien for not only conducting such significant research, but for being an inspirational leader in our field. He travelled the world using beautiful mathematics and amazing computer images to draw many young people into the field that he helped create. And he strolled the streets of every city, and hallways of every academic institution, with a song on his breath and a smile in his heart. At his invitation, I spent the fall of 2003 in Paris, attending the trimester in dynamical systems at IHP. That fall, Adrien initiated a "young People Seminar", a weekly math talk given by and for the group of 10 or so of us who were still working on, or had recently completed, our PhD dissertations. Not many mathematicians as famous as Adrien spent as much energy as he did on encouraging the next generation. I believe I can speak for the group of us when I say that we simply adored him. We saw him as a living legend. That fall at IHP, he also ran a weekly French poetry lesson, in which each week he interpreted a different Baudelaire poem from Les Fleurs du Mal. He often performed french folk songs for us, and even tried to teach us the song version of Baudelaire's 'Le vin de l'assassin'. My first mathematical visit to Paris was a long weekend when when Adrien invited me (along with another Cornell student, Karl Papadontanakis) to work on his next dynamics movie project with Francois Tessier (remember his rabbit movie? He had ambitions to make one about the parabolic implosion). The first night in town, he invited us to attend a birthday party (with a meter high cake made of cream puffs coated in some glorious caramel), and chamber music performance, at his and Regine's impressive home on Rue M. Le Prince. Every morning of that visit, we went to his house for coffee...and to eat more of the leftover cake. I remember we walked what looked on our map like the shortest route from his house to Tessier's studio, but somehow Adrien slipped away from us, took a shortcut, and beat us there. I have gathered that one way in which the French culture is different from the U.S. is that they put more value on academia and academics. I never witnessed myself, but heard several stories (as happens with a "living legend") of how Adrien had been seen singing french folk songs with performers on the streets in Paris. I have the impression that this, among many other things I haven't been privy to, endeared Adrien to the people of Paris. I also heard rumors (is this correct?) that Adrien appeared on french TV news multiple times. It is possible I'm mis-remembering, and that instead I was merely told that academics appear on TV more often in France than in the U.S. But if that was the case, this conjured up a quite convincing image in my mind of Adrien representing French mathematicians to the general public. If he did not do so on TV, then at least he did this to the many people with whom he came in contact. I only came into his life near the end, so I can't adequately express how much he really will be missed. I hope soon there will be an appropriate article honoring his life and his work in the Notices. My prayers right now are that everyone whose life touched will feel peace. In sorrow, but appreciation for knowing him, Suzanne Lynch Hruska |
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| Guestbook entry of Kevin M. Pilgrim, on 08.11.2006 | |
| I
was often touched by his modesty and frankness. Several times when he
had been thinking about something he said simply to me, ``Here is an
argument...what do you think? What is clear, what is not?'', listened
to my clumsy replies, and offered alternatives. He cared at a very
personal level about the process of commmunicating mathematics. My
deepest sympathies to his family and friends. Kevin M. Pilgrim |
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| Guestbook entry of Bob Devaney, on 08.11.2006 | |
| My fondest memory of Adrien goes back to the 1980s. Adrien stayed at our house several times when he came to Boston. At that time we had a severely handicapped daughter, Meggie. Meggie could not see or sit up or do anything, but she could hear, and she loved singing. So when Adrien came, he, as always, would be singing. And Meggie would laugh. So he would sing a little louder. And Meggie would laugh more. So Adrien would sing the entire time she was awake and Megie would squeal with delight the entire time; she just loved it. This was undoubtedly my wife's and my fondest memory of them both. Clearly, Adrien cared about everyone. | |
| Guestbook entry of Nuria Fagella, on 08.11.2006 | |
| I enjoyed so much of Adrien's generosity, mathematically and personally, his joy of living, that I cannot imagine how it will be from now on. We all saw how he had fun with everything he did, and that is how we must continue. | |
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