Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (1957-2016): A Frenchman with a Brazilian heart
Jean-Christophe Yoccoz was a brilliant mathematician. As a young student, he won a silver medal (1973) and a gold one (1974) at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).
He graduated in Mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) under the guidance of Michael Herman, one of the founders of dynamical systems, and completed his PhD at the University of Paris-Sud (1985).
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He had a close relationship with Brazil, its researchers and IMPA. It all began in the 1980s when he studied at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics as part of the French government’s “cooperation” program. He learned Portuguese and, in Rio he would meet his future wife, Dalva, who gave him a son, Tiago.
In 1988, he won the Salem Prize and was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians of Kyoto (Japan) in 1990.
A specialist in dynamical systems and a major mathematician, Yoccoz was a member of several international academic organizations, including the French Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
A professor at Collège de France and an honorary researcher at IMPA, he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1994 at the ICM in Zurich (Switzerland). The following year, he became a knight of the French Legion of Honor and was awarded the Grand Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit of Brazil (1998).
He died in 2016, at 59, leaving an important legacy for mathematics.
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