{"id":11717,"date":"2020-04-18T12:43:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T16:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=11717"},"modified":"2020-04-18T17:31:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T21:31:02","slug":"lucien-szpiro-1941-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=11717","title":{"rendered":"Lucien Szpiro 1941-2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m very sorry to hear (via Michael Harris) of the death this morning in Paris of Lucien Szpiro, of heart failure. Szpiro was a faculty member here at Columbia for a few years, livening up the place at a time when the department was smaller and quieter than it is now. He then went on to a position at the CUNY Graduate Center and was often at the department here for number theory related talks. The Graduate Center has a short bio of him here<\/a>, and on his website<\/a> you can find more about his work, including some very nice short and lucid lecture notes on arithmetic geometry (see here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Some pictures of him and other mathematicians at his 70th birthday conference in 2012<\/a> can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What Szpiro is probably most famous for is the “Szpiro Conjecture” about elliptic curves which he first formulated in 1981. This is essentially equivalent to the later abc conjecture that has been the topic of recent controversy, so we really should have been all this time arguing about Szpiro, not abc. In a 2007 blog post<\/a> I put out the news that Szpiro had announced a proof of abc at a talk he gave at Columbia (at Dorian Goldfeld’s 60th birthday conference). Alas, a flaw in that proof was quickly found.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Something about Szpiro from Christian Peskine:<\/p>\n

\n

Lucien Szpiro est d\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 d’une crise cardiaque samedi 18 avril. Ceux qui l’ont bien connu souhaitent d’abord saluer un homme d’exception. Lucien \u00e9tait tout \u00e0 la fois un solitaire, un collaborateur passionn\u00e9 et un patron aim\u00e9 et respect\u00e9. Un homme solitaire, intransigeant sur sa libert\u00e9, sur ses choix et sur la consid\u00e9ration qu’il attendait. Un collaborateur passionn\u00e9ment ouvert au partage des id\u00e9es et des projets. Un leader entrainant ses amis dans des aventures scientifiques nouvelles et enrichissantes. <\/p>\n

Recrut\u00e9 au CNRS apr\u00e8s un cours passage comme assistant \u00e0 la facult\u00e9 des sciences de Paris, il y est rest\u00e9 jusqu’\u00e0 son d\u00e9part \u00e0 City University (New York) au d\u00e9but du si\u00e8cle. Le s\u00e9minaire qu’il a anim\u00e9 pendant de nombreuses ann\u00e9es a \u00e9t\u00e9 pour beaucoup de coll\u00e8gues de tous ages un lieu d’\u00e9tude et de formation. Son influence et ses recherches ont fait honneur au CNRS. Ses nombreux \u00e9l\u00e8ves en t\u00e9moigneront de leur cot\u00e9. Il \u00e9tait heureux \u00e0 New York ou il avait trouv\u00e9 une forme de s\u00e9r\u00e9nit\u00e9. <\/p>\n

Ayant collabor\u00e9 intens\u00e9ment avec Lucien durant de nombreuses ann\u00e9es, je comprends que je perds un ami avec qui j’ai partag\u00e9 des moments d’une intensit\u00e9 et d’une beaut\u00e9 rares. Il aimait la vie, il aimait la science et il aimait la recherche math\u00e9matique.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m very sorry to hear (via Michael Harris) of the death this morning in Paris of Lucien Szpiro, of heart failure. Szpiro was a faculty member here at Columbia for a few years, livening up the place at a time … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11717"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11730,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11717\/revisions\/11730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}