Jean-Pierre Tignol

Jean-Pierre Tignol (b. 1954) is a Belgian mathematician and historian of mathematics specializing in the field of quadratic forms and linear algebraic groups. He is a full professor emeritus at Université catholique de Louvain.

Education and career Tignol was awarded a PhD (1988) at the Université catholique de Louvain for his thesis Involution bodies of finite rank at their center and with characteristic other than 21 written under the supervision of Jacques Tits. He subsequently became a professor at the same university.

In his 2001 book, Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations, he explored the evolution of algebra from ancient Babylon to the eras of Galois and Grothendieck. A review by the Mathematical Association of America said, "Anybody with an interest in algebra or the history of mathematics should look at this book. And of course it goes without saying that it belongs in any good university library."

Books 2001 Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations World Scientific,

2015 Value Functions on Simple Algebras, and Associated Graded Rings (with AR Wadsworth) Springer Cham,

Papers 1993 "On the signature of an involution", (with David W. Lewis), Arch. Math. (Basel) 60, no. 2, 128–135. 1979 "Division algebras of degree 4 and 8 with involution", (with Shimshon Amitsur and L. H. Rowen), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 115, p. 691-693 1987 "Totally ramified valuations on finite-dimensional division algebras", (with A. R. Wadsworth), Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 302, p. 223-250 1995 "The multipliers of similitudes and the Brauer group of homogeneous varieties", (with Alexander Merkurjev), Journal fur die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik, vol. 461, p. 13-48 1993 "Hyperbolic involutions", (with Eva Bayer-Fluckiger and D. B. Shapiro), Mathematische Zeitschrift, vol. 214, p. 461-476

Awards In 1994 he was awarded the Eugene Catalan Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in Belgium.

In the years 2010 to 2012, Jean-Pierre Tignol was awarded several Senior Fellowships of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.