Jorge Sotomayor

He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of San Marcos, in Lima, Peru, and his doctorate from IMPA.

He was a professor at the Institute of Mathematics at the National University of Engineering, Lima and at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a researcher at IMPA for more than two decades,
from where he went to USP in São Paulo as a full professor. He was a visiting professor at Dijon, Los Andes, University of Chile and IHES, France.

He is the author of several research papers on the Theory of Bifurcations of Differential Equations and is considered a pioneer in the modern approach to this area. He worked on the interrelationship between the Theories of Dynamical Systems and Singularities of Differentiable Applications and was an enthusiastic disseminator of René Thom’s Theory of Catastrophes.

He was a great admirer of the game of chess, which he cultivated with commitment, especially on the Leblon boardwalk.