Georges Bruhat (1887–1945)

Georges Bruhat was born in Besançon, France, where his father worked as an administrative officer. From 1906 to 1909, he studied at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris with Henri Abraham, Marcel Brillouin, and Aimé Cotton, among others, and at the Sorbonne, where he took courses with Gabriel Lippmann and Edmond Bouty. After earning a degree in mathematics and physics, he taught for a year at the Lycée Buffon before obtaining a position at the ENS, which enabled him to work on his PhD in optics. He received his doctorate in 1914, and during World War I, was involved with the development of a new sound tracking device, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In 1919, he became a lecturer at the University of Lille and then in 1927 at the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris, assigned to the ENS. He was best-known for his research in optics and for his four volume general physics texts: Electricity (1924); Thermodynamics (1926); Optics (1930); and Mechanics (1934). In 1935, he became deputy director at the ENS. In 1941, during World War II, he was named chairman of physics and acting director. On August 4, 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo as he was unwilling to collaborate in locating a student member of the French Resistance at the school. He was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, and then to Sachsenhausen, where he died in 1945. He was the father of mathematician François Bruhat and mathematician-physicist Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat. The Prix des trois physiciens (Three Physicists Prize) was established in 1951 by the ENS and the Fondation Eugène-Bloch to honor Georges Bruhat along with Eugène Bloch and Henri Abraham.