Léon Autonne
Léon César Autonne was a French engineer and mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry, differential equations, and linear algebra.Education and career
Autonne studied from 1878 to 1880 at l'École polytechnique and then at the École des ponts et chaussées and became there Ingénieur en chef. He received in 1882 from the Sorbonne his Ph.D. with dissertation Recherches sur les intégrales algébriques des équations differentielles à coefficients rationnels, with Charles Hermite as chair of the thesis committee. The dissertation was based on research initiated by Camille Jordan.
An 1891 article by Autonne in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris is one of the earliest uses of the concept of Lie groups.
Autonne won the Prix Dalmont in 1894. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1897, 1900, 1904 and 1908. On 6 January 1902 he was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
The Autonne-Takagi factorization of complex symmetric matrices is named in his honour.Selected publications
- Recherches sur les intégrales algébriques des équations differentielles à coefficients rationnels, Gauthier-Villars 1882
- , Gauthier-Villars 1891
- 1896
- , Hayez, 1901
- , Annales de l'Université de Lyon, 1905
- , Annales de l'Université de Lyon, 1909
- , Annales de l'Université de Lyon, 1912
- , Gauthier Villars 1913
- , Annales de l'Université de Lyon, 1915
