Maurício Peixoto, founder of IMPA, dies at age 98.
Mathematician Maurício Matos Peixoto, one of the founders and emeritus researcher at IMPA (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics), died this Sunday (28), at the age of 98, in Rio de Janeiro. An internationally renowned researcher, Maurício Peixoto was president of CNPq, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Mathematical Society (SBM).
With over 40 published works, his talent was recognized throughout his life. In 1969, he received the Moinho Santista Prize, then considered one of the most traditional incentives for Brazilian intellectual production. In 1987, he won the Mathematics Prize from the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He also received the Grand Cross and the Commendation of the National Order of Scientific Merit, among other honors.
“Maurício’s life and career are intertwined with the history of Brazilian mathematics, which he helped to create and greatly inspired. I am happy that he was able to witness Brazil’s promotion to the elite group of world mathematics and the International Congress of Mathematicians in Brazil,” stated Marcelo Viana, Director-General of IMPA.
The son of the governor of Ceará, José Carlos de Matos Peixoto, deposed by the Revolution of 1930, he was forced with his family to move to Rio de Janeiro. Born on April 15, 1921, his interest in mathematics arose in childhood, at age 11, curiously after failing the subject at Colégio Pedro II in Rio. He received private lessons from Nelson Chaves, also from Ceará, a family friend and student at the School of Engineering, who helped him pass the second-chance exam. “We started from scratch and I was dazzled by his classes. Even then, I decided I was going to study something involving mathematics,” he recounted in an interview for the book IMPA 50 Years.
Since a career in mathematics didn't exist, he went to the School of Engineering at the University of Brazil. There, he befriended his classmates Leopoldo Nachbin, his "inseparable companion" and also a founder of IMPA, and Marília de Magalhães Chaves, whom he would marry in 1946. The two were important influences in Maurício's decision to become a mathematician.
In 1943, he received his degree in civil engineering, a profession he never practiced: he really enjoyed studying and teaching mathematics. At the same school, he passed the competitive examination for the position of Associate Professor of Rational Mechanics in 1947, and for the Chair of the same discipline in 1952.
Founder of IMPA
It was also in 1952 that, alongside Lélio Gama and Leopoldo Nachbin, Maurício founded IMPA. Initially, the institute did not have its own headquarters: it was temporarily housed in a room at the headquarters of the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (created three years earlier), in Praia Vermelha, in the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro. The first scientific unit of the National Research Council (CNPq), IMPA was created with the objective of stimulating scientific research in Mathematics, training researchers, and disseminating and improving mathematical culture in Brazil.
In 1964, Maurício embarked for the United States to join the faculty of Brown University, where he would remain until 1970. The invitation came from Solomon Lefschetz, a mathematician he had met in 1957 when he spent a year at Princeton University working on the Structural Stability of Differential Equations. Back in Brazil, he taught at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) of the University of São Paulo from 1973 to 1978.
At IMPA, he developed important studies. Peixoto's Theorem, which characterizes structurally stable vector fields on compact 2-dimensional manifolds, was a mathematical milestone in Brazil and worldwide, related to Dynamical Systems.
His talent as a teacher was reflected in the students' performance. In 1962, he mentored foreign students Ivan Kupka and Jorge Sotomayor, who produced outstanding work in Dynamical Systems, with immediate international impact. These two theses were initial steps in establishing IMPA as a world-class research institution. Maurício also worked with the American mathematician Stephen Smale, winner of the Fields Medal in 1966, who visited IMPA on several occasions.
In 1974, he was the second Brazilian to speak as an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Vancouver, Canada – the first had been his friend Leopoldo Nachbin, in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1962.
Maurício Peixoto presided over CNPq in 1979 and 1980. The following year, he assumed the presidency of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, where he had been a member since 1949. He held the position for ten years, until 1991, when he became an emeritus researcher at IMPA. Five years later, he was appointed a member of the National Council for Science and Technology.
Maurício married three times (to Marília, Maria Lucia Alvarenga Peixoto and Alciléa Augusto) and had four children: Martha, Ricardo, Marcos and Elisa. The wake will be held at Memorial do Carmo, this Monday (29), from 2 pm to 6 pm.
