YOCCOZ, JEAN-CHRISTOPHE

born May 29, 1957, France French mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1994 for his work in dynamical systems. Yoccoz was educated at the cole Normale Suprieure, Paris, and the cole Polytechnique, Palaiseau (Ph.D., 1985). He then became a professor at the University of Paris at Orsay. Yoccoz was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zrich, Switz., in 1994. His area of interest was dynamical systems, an area developed by Henri Poincar about the turn of the 20th century to study the stability of the solar system. The techniques are applied to problems in biology, chemistry, mechanics, and ecology where stability is an issue. This work also produces aesthetically appealing objects, such as the Julia and Mandelbrot fractal sets. Yoccoz was primarily concerned with establishing criteria that gave precise bounds on the validity of stability theorems. A combinatorial method for studying the Julia and Mandelbrot sets was named Yoccoz puzzles. Yoccoz' publications include Petits diviseurs en dimension 1 (1995; Small Divisors in Dimension 1).