Photo of Jean-Pierre Serre: Wuppertal, 1987 (Photo:Ludwig W.Danzer)
Serre was from 1956 professor in algebra and geometry at Collège de France, since 1994 emeritus.
Jean-Pierre Serre has in a significant way influenced several areas of mathematics.
Within algebraic topology he achieved very important results about the homotopy groups of spheres,
by introducing what is now known as Serre’s spectral sequence.
He reformed algebraic geometry by, among other things, introducing homological methods
and sheaf theory, and one can find in his algebro-geometrical work the germ of the revolution
of the field later carried through by Grothendieck.
Serre has given essential contributions to Galois theory, a theory originating in the theory of
equations that Abel worked on, and he has been one of the driving forces in the development
of the theory of l-adic representations that is a core in Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem.
