Étienne Halphen


Étienne Halphen was a French mathematician. He was known for his work in geometry, on probability distributions and information theory.

Biography

He was born as son of Germaine and Louis Halphen, a professor of history at Sorbonne, and grandson of Georges Henri Halphen and Mathieu Weill, both renowned mathematicians. He did his studies at École Normale Supérieure, where he received his agrégation in 1933. He worked as a teacher at Lycée de Sens, where he was granted an indefinite leave of absence after a year due to health issues. From 1936 to 1940 he was member of the Research Group on Calculus of Probabilities and Mathematical Statistics. During the German occupation of France, he was banned from public service, but reinstated in 1945. During that period he was invited by Pierre Massé to join a statistics research group on hydrology at Societe hydro-technique de France. With the creation of Électricité de France in 1946, Étienne Halphen and his group including Lucien Le Cam and Georges Morlat were attached to the Service des Études et Recherches Hydrauliques. . He work there until 1951, when his health problems required hospitalisation. Suffering from periods of depression, he took his life in August 1954.

Works

Posthumously:
An overview of Halphen's work on probability distributions is given by Georges Morlat.

Awards

Étienne Halphen received the Prix Montyon de Statistique of the Académie des sciences posthumously in November 1954 for his work on statistical hydrology.