Gustave Juvet
Gustave Juvet was a Swiss mathematician. He made contributions to relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. He authored the first comprehensive French treatise on tensor calculus in 1922, and his work on Clifford algebras and spinors between 1930 and 1935 anticipated unified geometric approaches to physics that would later become influential in theoretical physics.
Biography
Juvet received his licence in mathematical sciences from the University of Neuchâtel in 1917 and then the same degree from the Sorbonne in 1919. He taught astronomy and geodesy from 1920 to 1928 at the University of Neuchâtel. In 1928 he became a professor at the University of Lausanne, where he retained his academic position until his unexpected death from a heart attack in 1936. In 1926 he received his doctorate from the Faculté des sciences de Paris.He was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1928 in Bologna and in 1932 in Zürich. For the two years 1932 and 1933 he was the President of the Swiss Mathematical Society.
In adolescence, while attending Neuchâtel's gymnasium, he was a close friend of Jean Piaget and Rolin Wavre. Juvet married in 1925.
In 1922, Juvet published Introduction au calcul tensoriel et au calcul différentiel absolu, the first comprehensive French treatise on tensor and absolute differential calculus, establishing his reputation in the early development of relativity studies in France. From 1927 to 1928, in collaboration with Ferdinand Gonseth, he advanced five-dimensional extensions of general relativity and electromagnetism—applying Kaluza–Klein theory to the metric structure of spacetime and to the Schrödinger equation. Between 1930 and 1935, he authored seminal papers on Clifford algebras, anticipating unified geometric approaches to physics later known as geometrodynamics. His analyses of axiomatic geometry and structural methods in modern physical theories were cited by Gaston Bachelard and Albert Lautman, reflecting Juvet's influence on the philosophical foundations of twentieth-century science.
Selected publications
Articles
- with Ferdinand Gonseth: