Patrick Dehornoy


Patrick Dehornoy was a mathematician at the University of Caen who worked on set theory and algebra. He found one of the first applications of large cardinals to algebra by constructing a certain left-invariant total order, called the Dehornoy order, on the braid group. He was one of the main contributors to the development of Garside methods in group theory, leading in particular to a conjectured solution for the word problem of general Artin–Tits groups.

Education and career

Dehornoy completed his Ph.D. in 1978 at the University of Paris, with a thesis written under the direction of Kenneth Walter McAloon. He was a Professor at the University of Caen from 1983.
From 2009 to 2013, he was adjunct scientific director of the Institut national des sciences mathématiques et de leurs interactions at the CNRS.

Selected publications