Bernard Morin

Bernard Morin (French: [mɔʁɛ̃]; 3 March 1931 in Shanghai, China – 12 March 2018)^[1] was a French mathematician, specifically a topologist.

Bernard Morin
Born	(1931-03-03)3 March 1931 Shanghai, China
Died	12 March 2018(2018-03-12) (aged 87) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics Topology
Institutions	Institute for Advanced Study University of Strasbourg
Doctoral advisor	René Thom

Looping animated cutaway view of Boy's surface.

Early life and education

Morin lost his sight at the age of six due to glaucoma, but his blindness did not prevent him from having a successful career in mathematics.^[2] He received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.^[3][2]

Career

Morin was a member of the group that first exhibited an eversion of the sphere,^[4] i.e., a homotopy which starts with a sphere and ends with the same sphere but turned inside-out. He also discovered the Morin surface, which is a half-way model for the sphere eversion, and used it to prove a lower bound on the number of steps needed to turn a sphere inside out.

Morin discovered the first parametrization of Boy's surface (earlier used as a half-way model), in 1978. His graduate student François Apéry, in 1986, discovered another parametrization of Boy's surface, which conforms to the general method for parametrizing non-orientable surfaces.^[5]

Morin worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Most of his career, though, he spent at the University of Strasbourg.

Morin's surface.

See also

• Blind mathematicians: Leonhard Euler, Nicholas Saunderson, Lev Pontryagin, Louis Antoine