SERRE, JEAN-PIERRE

born Sept. 15, 1926, Bages, France French mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 for his work in algebraic topology. Serre attended the cole Normale Suprieure, Paris (194548), and received his Ph.D. (1951) from the Sorbonne. Between 1948 and 1954 he was at the National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris, and after two years at the University of Nancy he moved to the Collge de France in 1956. He retired in 1994. Between 1983 and 1986 Serre served as vice president of the International Mathematical Union. Serre was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in 1954. Serre's mathematical contributions leading up to the Fields Medal were largely in the field of algebra, but his work ranged widelyin algebraic geometry, group theory, number theory, and especially topology. By seeing unifying ideas he helped to unite disparate branches of mathematics. One of the more recent phenomena in which he was one of the principal contributors was the applications of algebraic geometry to number theoryapplications now falling into a separate subclass called arithmetic geometry. Serre's publications include Groupes algbriques et corps de classes (1959; Algebraic Groups and Class Fields); Corps locaux (1962; Local Fields); Lie Algebras and Lie Groups (1965); Abelian l-adic Representations and Elliptic Curves (1968); Cours d'arithmtique (1970; A Course in Arithmetic); Cohomologie Galoisienne (1964; Galois Cohomology); Reprsentations linaires des groupes finis (1967; Linear Representations of Finite Groups); Algbre locale, multiplicits (1965; Local Algebra: Multiplicities); Arbres, amalgames, SL2 (1977; Trees); and, with Uwe Jannsen and Steven L. Kleiman, Motives (1994). His collected works were published in 1986. A Leroy P. Steele Prize in 1995 was awarded to Serre on the basis of his 1970 book, A Course in Arithmetic.