Michel Raynaud

Michel Raynaud (; 16 June 1938 – 10 March 2018 ) was a French mathematician working in algebraic geometry and a professor at Paris-Sud 11 University.

Early life and education He was born in Riom, France as a single son to a modest household. His father was a carpenter and his mother cleaned houses. He attended the local primary school at Châtel Guyon and Riom, and attended high school at the boarding school in Clermont-Ferrand. In 1985, he proved Raynaud's isogeny theorem on Faltings heights of isogenous elliptic curves. With David Harbater and following the work of Jean-Pierre Serre, Raynaud proved Abhyankar's conjecture in 1994.

The Raynaud surface was named after him by William E. Lang in 1979.

Honors and awards In 1970 Raynaud was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice. In 1987 he received the Prize Ampère from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1995 he received the Cole Prize, together with David Harbater, for his solution of the Abhyankar conjecture.

Personal life He practiced skiing (especially in Val-d'Isère), tennis, and rock climbing (in Fontainebleau). He was married to the mathematician Michèle Raynaud who also worked with Alexander Grothendieck.