Henri Poincaré

Biography

Born in Nancy, France. Studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines in Paris. He was a professor at the Sorbonne and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. In addition to physics and mathematics, he engaged in the philosophy of science and wrote several well-known books on methodology. His cousin was the President of France, Raymond Poincaré. He received many awards, including the Lorentz Medal.

Key discoveries

• Principle of relativity and constancy of the speed of light: independently of Einstein, he formulated the postulates of special relativity, postulating that the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames.
• Prediction of gravitational waves: in his 1905 work, he suggested that accelerated masses should generate gravitational waves propagating at the speed of light.
• Chaos theory and the three-body problem: he proved the non-integrability of the three-body problem and discovered chaotic behavior in dynamical systems, initiating chaos theory.
• Foundation of topology: he introduced the fundamental group and laid the foundations of algebraic topology, publishing the work 'Analysis situs'.