Claude Chevalley

When Chevalley applied for a chair at the Sorbonne, the difficulties he encountered were the subject of a polemical piece by his friend and fellow Bourbakiste André Weil, titled "Science Française?" and published in the Nouvelle Revue Française. Chevalley was the "professeur B" of the piece, as confirmed in the endnote to the reprint in Weil's collected works, Oeuvres Scientifiques, tome II. Chevalley eventually did obtain a position in 1957 at the faculty of sciences of the University of Paris and after 1970 at the Université de Paris VII.

Around 1950, Chevalley wrote a three-volume treatment of Lie groups. A few years later, he published the work for which he is best remembered, his investigation into what are now called Chevalley groups. Chevalley groups make up 9 of the 18 families of finite simple groups.

In the 1950s, Chevalley led some Paris seminars of major importance: the Séminaire Cartan–Chevalley of the academic year 1955-6, with Henri Cartan and the Séminaire Chevalley of 1956-7 and 1957-8. These dealt with topics on algebraic groups and the foundations of algebraic geometry, as well as pure abstract algebra. The Cartan–Chevalley seminar was the genesis of scheme theory, but its subsequent development in the hands of Alexander Grothendieck was so rapid, thorough and inclusive that its historical tracks can appear well covered. Grothendieck's work subsumed the more specialised contribution of Serre, Chevalley, Gorō Shimura and others such as Erich Kähler and Masayoshi Nagata.

When World War II broke out, Chevalley was at Princeton University. After reporting to the French Embassy, he stayed in the U.S., first at Princeton and then (after 1947) at Columbia University. His American students included Leon Ehrenpreis and Gerhard Hochschild. During his time in the U.S., Chevalley became an American citizen and wrote a substantial part of his lifetime's output in English.

Chevalley had artistic and political interests, and was a minor member of the French non-conformists of the 1930s. The following quote by the co-editor of Chevalley's collected works attests to these interests:

His father, Abel Chevalley, was a French diplomat who, jointly with his wife Marguerite Chevalley née Sabatier, wrote The Concise Oxford French Dictionary. Chevalley graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in 1929, where he studied under Émile Picard. He then spent time at the University of Hamburg, studying under Emil Artin and at the University of Marburg, studying under Helmut Hasse. In Germany, Chevalley discovered Japanese mathematics in the person of Shokichi Iyanaga. Chevalley was awarded a doctorate in 1933 from the University of Paris for a thesis on class field theory.

Claude Chevalley (French: [ʃəvalɛ]; 11 February 1909 – 28 June 1984) was a French mathematician who made important contributions to number theory, algebraic geometry, class field theory, finite group theory and the theory of algebraic groups. He was a founding member of the Bourbaki group.