Alexandre Grossmann

  Born in 1930 in Zagreb, Alex Grossmann fled the pro-Nazi Croatian regime for Tuscany in 1941, then Switzerland, before returning to Yugoslavia after the war. In 1955 he obtained a doctorate in physics at the Ruđer Bošković Institute. 

  After leaving for the United States, he worked in the Physics Departments of Brandeis University and NYU at the Courant Institute and then at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton until 1964. After a year at the IHES (Bures-sur-Yvette, France) he joined at the request of Daniel Kastler the nascent Center of Theoretical Physics of Marseille in 1966, on a permanent CNRS position  of "Master of Research" (Director of Research). With an interest in computer science and genomics from the years 1993-1995, he joined the newly created "Génome et Informatique Laboratory”, at the University of Versailles, then transferred in 2000 to the genopole of Evry, where Alex becomes one of the animators. The laboratory undergoes name changes ("Statistics and Genome" laboratory in 2006, then a group of the LAMMe Laboratory of Mathematics & Modeling of Evry), but Alex Grossmann remains actively involved in the group until December 2014. He was twice awarded the emeritus titles of 5 years. 

  A truly multidisciplinary and multilingual researcher, Alex Grossmann first made very important contributions to the mathematics of quantum mechanics – analyticity of scattering amplitude, functional analysis, pseudo-differential operators, solid physics, Fermi pseudo-potentials, quantification - without forgetting statistical physics and antenna theory. In 1980, he met the geophysicist Jean Morlet of Elf-Aquitaine society. Together, they formalize the now famous "wavelet theory", first of all by introducing the group "ax+b" (dilation, translation) the direct and inverse transforms in continuous complex wavelets (time-scales or position-scales), or even directional (rotation) - then by discretization techniques, the construction of fast algorithms in any dimension (e.g. algorithms “àtrous”), and the construction of bases, including the "frames" that will lead to orthogonal bases, bi-orthogonal (developed by Yves Meyer), etc ... He will create and lead since 1986 the international Wavelets Research Group (in French GDR "Ondelettes"). Since then, wavelet analysis has been exploited in various fields (e.g. signal analysis and resynthesis, pattern recognition, localization and characterization of discontinuities, image processing (including JPEG2000 format), fractals theory, inverse problems in potential theory, geophysics, the study of turbulent phenomena, the sciences of the universe, the detection of gravitational waves, etc.). From 1993-1995 Alex Grossmann was interested in problems of bioinformatics and genomics, in particular the use of linear algebra for the comparison of biological sequences; the quantitative study of the evolution of protein sequences. 

  With his profoundly original mind, combining the abstract and the applied, the cultural and the creative, Alexandre Grossmann has left a lasting imprint of his vision of knowledge to several generations of scientists.