Paulette Libermann

Paulette Libermann (14 November 1919 – 10 July 2007) was a French mathematician who became a full professor at the University of Rennes in 1958. As a researcher, she specialized in differential geometry and global analysis, in particular G-structures, Cartan's equivalence method, and contact geometry. In 1987 she wrote together with Charles-Michel Marle one of the first textbooks on symplectic geometry and analytical mechanics.

Biography

Early life and education Born on 14 November 1919 in Paris, Libermann was one of three sisters belonging to a family of Russian-Ukrainian Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants to France.

After attending the Lycée Lamartine, she began her university studies in 1938 at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles, a college in Sèvres for training women to become school teachers. Due to the reforms of the new director Eugénie Cotton, who wanted her school to be at the same level of École Normale Supérieure, Libermann was taught by leading mathematicians including Élie Cartan, Jacqueline Ferrand and André Lichnerowicz.

Two years later, upon completion of her studies, she was prevented from taking the agrégation and becoming a teacher because of the anti-Jewish laws instituted by the German occupation. However, thanks to a scholarship provided by Cotton, she began doing research under Cartan's supervision.

In 1966 Libermann moved to the University of Paris, becoming one of the first few women to receive a full professorship in a French university, and when the university split in 1968, she joined Paris Diderot University, from which she retired in 1986. In particular, she worked on G-structures and Cartan's equivalence method, Lie groupoids and Lie pseudogroups, higher-order connections, and contact geometry.

After her appointment as a full professor in Paris. Libermann continued her work as an influential researcher, developing the work of Cartan and Ehlermann and publishing some 70 papers until her death in 2007.

Libermann travelled widely, speaking at many conferences and visiting universities and research associations, including Oxford University, the University of California at Berkeley, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Brazil.

Honors In 2026, Libermann was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.

Selected publications