PIERRE CARTIER is academic by training, emeritus research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), and research scientist and a visitor (for indeterminate term) at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) of Bures-sur-Yvette. He is currently emeritus research director at the University Paris-Diderot. He is former member of the Bourbaki group. Born in 1932 in Sedan, Professor Carier, despite his provincial background, followed the path of excellence in his studies: a secondary school in his home town, followed by the lycee Saint-Louis in Paris and then the Ecole normale superieure, and he obtained an advanced teaching degree and a doctorate in mathematics (1958). He also went to Princeton for two years; there he became acquainted with legendary figures such as Robert Oppenheimer and Andre Weil (brother of philosopher Simone Weil). Last but not least, he carried out a long military service in the marine corps against the backdrop of the Algerian war. He was then professor at the University of Strasbourg from 1961 to 1971. The years 1950–1975 were the hey-day of the Bourbaki group, of which he is one of the pillars; there he became friends with famous people like Cartan, Schwartz, Dieudonne, Chevalley, Weil, and with younger ones.
A “mathematician without borders”, Professor Cartier is active within the framework of the cooperation agency of the French Mathematical Society (Cimpa). He had been working in the Paris region since 1971, and he roamed around between Parisian academic institutions: University Paris-Sud, École polytechnique, École normale supérieure. He is not a member of the French Academy of Sciences (a voluntary choice). His scientific interests are quite diverse (even eclectic), but centered around group theory and mathematical physics. He often cited thesis relates to algebraic geometry, by he also contributed to differential geometry, number theory, combinatorics, numerical analysis, probability and mathematical physics. He wrote a reference book on Feynman Integrals (in collaboration with C. DeWitt-Morette, Functional Integration, Action and symmetries (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He is also one of the editors of Mathematics in the 21st Century: 6th World Conference, Lahore, March 2013 (Springer, 2014). He has supervised more than 40 doctoral theses, and he continues to work with some of my students on multiple zeta values and the Galois theory of differential equations.
