Claire Voisin
Claire Voisin | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 4, 1962 France |
| Occupation | Mathematician |
| Known for | Work in algebraic geometry, disproving extended Hodge conjecture, contributions to mirror symmetry |
| Notable work | Hodge Theory and Complex Algebraic Geometry; Mirror Symmetry |
Claire Voisin (born 4 March 1962) is a distinguished French mathematician recognized for her significant work in algebraic geometry. She is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and occupied the chair of algebraic geometry at the Collège de France between 2015 and 2020.
Work
Voisin’s expertise lies in algebraic geometry, with a particular emphasis on the study of variations in Hodge structures and mirror symmetry. She has authored multiple books dedicated to Hodge theory. In 2002, she achieved a major breakthrough by disproving the extended form of the Hodge conjecture for compact Kähler varieties, a landmark result given that the conjecture is one of the seven Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize Problems, accompanied by a $1 million reward.
Her honors include the European Mathematical Society Prize awarded in 1992, the Servant Prize from the Academy of Sciences in 1996, and the Sophie Germain Prize in 2003. She was honored with the Clay Research Award in 2008 for her refutation of the Kodaira conjecture concerning deformations of compact Kähler manifolds. The next year, she received the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics for resolving crucial cases of Green's conjecture related to syzygies of algebraic curves, a longstanding challenge within algebraic geometry.
Voisin was an invited speaker at the 1994 International Congress of Mathematicians held in Zürich and later served as a plenary speaker at the 2010 congress in Hyderabad. She was inducted into the Academia Europaea in 2014 and contributed to the Mathematical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2017 through 2019.
In 2009, Voisin became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and in 2016 she was named a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. That same year marked her historic appointment as the first woman mathematician to hold a chair at the Collège de France, where she assumed its inaugural Chair of Algebraic Geometry. She was awarded the prestigious CNRS Gold medal—France’s highest scientific distinction—in 2016. In 2017, she shared the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences with János Kollár.
Voisin was designated MSRI Clay Senior Scholar for both 2008-2009 and Spring 2019. She gained election as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2021 and became an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. In 2023, she received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences (jointly with Yakov Eliashberg), followed by being honored with the esteemed Crafoord Prize in Mathematics in 2024.
Personal life
She is married to applied mathematician Jean-Michel Coron, and together they have five children.
Selected publications
- Hodge Theory and Complex Algebraic Geometry, two volumes, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 2003.
- Mirror Symmetry, AMS, 1999.
- Variations of Hodge Structure on Calabi Yau Threefolds, Edizioni Scuola Normale Superiore, 2007.
- Co-editor with Mark Green and J. Murre: Algebraic Cycles and Hodge Theory, Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1594, Springer Verlag, 1994; includes Voisin’s contribution Transcendental methods in the study of algebraic cycles.