A bit of history
In 2010, a decree issued by the French Prime Minister stipulated that, as part of the Campus plan, the interest on a non-expendable capital sum of 40 million euros would be used to finance a project of scientific excellence in the field of mathematics and its interactions on the Saclay plateau. This project was intended to contribute to the development of the scientific policies of its members in all matters relating to mathematics, thus prefiguring, in a pilot discipline, the future structuring of the ambitious project for a new type of university on this vast perimeter.
This project for scientific excellence in mathematics came into being in 2011, in the form of a foundation under the auspices of the Fondation de Coopération Scientifique Campus Paris-Saclay (FCS), whose name is: Fondation Mathématique Jacques Hadamard (FMJH).
The founding members of the FMJH are CNRS, École polytechnique, ENS Cachan, IHÉS and Université Paris-Sud. With the scheduled end of the FCS, the FMJH changed its status in 2018 to become a partnership foundation, then again in 2019 to take account of the creation of the Université Paris-Saclay. It then took the form we know today as a partnership foundation, with the same founding members as in 2011, but with an "update" for two of them: Université Paris-Sud disappeared in favor of Université Paris-Saclay, while ENS Cachan became ENS Paris-Saclay.
In 2012, the FMJH also won the LabEx call from the Plan d'Investissement d'avenir, and the director of the FMJH also became the scientific leader of the LabEx Mathématique Hadamard (LMH), supported by IDEX Paris-Saclay. Its scientific policy, coordinated with that of the FMJH, has boosted support for mathematics at interfaces with other disciplines, as well as doctoral training.
2022 was a pivotal year. On the one hand, the way the FMJH is funded by the public authorities has changed, through an extension of the non-expendable IDEX Paris-Saclay endowment rather than an endowment from the Campus plan. Secondly, the LMH has ceased to exist on December 31, 2022.
Missions and achievements
Mission statement
Since its creation, the FMJH's mission has been to :
- develop structuring actions on the Paris-Saclay campus, particularly in terms of graduate training,
- accelerate the development of interactions with the business world and other scientific disciplines, while fostering the development of emerging multidisciplinary themes,
- strengthen and coordinate international collaboration programs,
- contribute to the development of the national mathematical fabric.
Obviously, these are all long-term missions, and much remains to be done. However, a number of significant achievements have been made, all of which are aimed at structuring the mathematical community on the Paris-Saclay campus.
Achievements
In 2015, the FMJH and Labex Mathématique Hadamard formed the crucible in which the graduate training in mathematics offered by the ComUE Université Paris-Saclay was forged. The Mathematics and Applications master's degree is the result of an in-depth reorganization of the master's offerings in the south of the Ile de France region, with a rationalization and the opening of new courses in promising fields: Mathematics for Life Sciences, Optimization, Data Science, Mathematics of Artificial Intelligence. Since its creation, the program, which is supported by more than fifteen research units, has achieved a flow of over 400 graduates per year. The FMJH supports the program through a scholarship program, as well as through a coordinating secretariat in its initial phase.
The scope of the Ecole Doctorale de Mathématiques Hadamard (EDMH) is identical to that of the Master's degree in mathematics and applications. It covers a very broad thematic field, from the heart of the discipline to its industrial applications and interfaces with other disciplines. With over 300 doctoral students, it is one of the largest mathematics doctoral programs in the world. Labex Mathématique Hadamard has supported it with thesis grants and doctoral training support programs. The flexibility of the LabEx has enabled us to optimize the use of resources and guarantee the quality of recruitment for the doctoral school.
The key point here is that this structuring of the graded training offer in mathematics has withstood the schism of the ComUE into two distinct entities. Since 2019, both the mathematics and applications master's degree and the EDMH have been co-accredited by the two institutions that emerged as a result of this split: the Université Paris-Saclay on the one hand, and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris on the other.
The FMJH today
An inclusive policy
The FMJH is continuing its work to structure the mathematical community of the entire Paris-Saclay Campus, which today comprises two poles: the Université Paris-Saclay and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris. The FMJH brings together more than fifteen mathematical research units. All are linked to the founding members and associate members who have joined the foundation since 2013: AgroParisTech, CentraleSupélec, ENSIIE, ENSTA ParisTech, INRAe, UEVE, UVSQ, ENSAE, Inria Paris-Saclay and finally Telecom Paris and Telecom Sud Paris. This work is essential if the Paris-Saclay Campus is to be seen, from China or elsewhere, as a world-class training and research center in mathematics.
Our resources
The FMJH benefits from the contributions of its founding members and associates, in addition to the resources provided by the public authorities (yesterday via Operation Campus and today via IDEX Paris-Saclay). The sponsorship program, which since 2021 has been redefined and is no longer limited to support to PGMO, brings in private funds.
To compensate for the discontinuation of the LMH at the end of 2022, the FMJH can fortunately count on a strong commitment from the University of Paris-Saclay and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris at its side. The FMJH is reinventing itself and adapting to this latest structural change in its young life, without losing sight of the essential: its missions.
Sharing our values
Founded in 2011, the FMJH serves a mathematical community whose history dates back to the early 1960s, with the arrival of the IHES in the Vallée de Chevreuse, the creation of a mathematics department at Orsay and then a mathematics center at the Ecole Polytechnique. Scientific Excellence and Openness to the world are the founding values of this community, which from the outset took the most prestigious international institutions as its model, and counted among its ranks immense figures in mathematics, visionaries in their discipline and advocates of noble values such as Humanism. It was from this family that the FMJH was born. It has naturally inherited its values, while adding the one that has enabled this family to grow: Cohesion. Today, the FMJH proudly cultivates the values of the mathematicians of Paris-Saclay, working together to forge the future without forgetting their history.
Why Jacques Hadamard?
By taking the name of Jacques Hadamard, the foundation has placed itself under the aegis of an exceptional personality, both in terms of his commitments and the richness and depth of his scientific work. What's more, he was a Professor at two of Paris-Saclay's most emblematic institutions: Ecole Centrale and Ecole Polytechnique. He thus perfectly symbolizes the idea of uniting themes and places, which is the founding principle of the FMJH.
More about his work
Biography of Jacques Hadamard
"I can dedicate my example to the parents who despair of their children's inability to overcome the first problems in arithmetic, because in arithmetic, even in the 7th grade, I was the last one or so".
An exceptional personality
A comforting message from the man who came first in both the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Normale entrance examinations... By taking the name of Jacques Hadamard, the Fondation Mathématique du campus Paris-Saclay is placing itself under the aegis of an exceptional personality in terms of his commitments and the richness and depth of his scientific work.
The life of Jacques Hadamard (1865 - 1963) spans from the reign of Napoleon III to the presidency of General de Gaulle.
Through his personal life, Jacques Hadamard was involved, sometimes painfully, in the great events of his time, notably during the Dreyfus Affair, the two World Wars in which he lost three sons and had to flee Nazism to the USA from 1940 to 1944.
These events are at the root of Jacques Hadamard's political commitment and pacifist stance.
As a young man, Jacques Hadamard excelled in Latin and Greek, but it was mathematics that he turned to. He came first in both the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Normale entrance examinations in 1884, and opted for the latter. His teachers were Jules Tannery and Emile Picard. In 1892, Jacques Hadamard obtained his doctorate with a thesis on functions defined by Taylor series, and was awarded the Prix des Sciences Mathématiques for his work on integer functions. His 1896 proof of the prime number theorem made him a major figure in the history of mathematics. Jacques Hadamard was elected Professor at the Collège de France in 1909 and a member of the Académie des Sciences in 1912.
A major influence
Jacques Hadamard's mathematical work is of exceptional depth and breadth. In particular, it transformed the theory of functions, contributed to the creation of functional analysis and renewed the theory of partial differential equations. His influence on the development of analysis in the twentieth century, and on the French mathematicians who founded the Bourbaki group, is impossible to exaggerate.
An exceptional personality presented by Pierre Pansu (Laboratoire Mathématique d'Orsay)
Speech recorded at the EDMH back-to-school days on 18 October 2024
