Cedric Villani's Home Page

Cédric VILLANI

Professeur de mathématiques de l'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon

Directeur de l'Institut Henri Poincaré

11 rue Pierre et Marie Curie

75230 Paris Cedex 05, FRANCE

E-mail: cvillani@umpa.ens-lyon.fr
Tel: +33 1 44 27 67 92
Fax: +33 1 46 34 04 56

Since September 2000 I have been Professor in the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where I have done research and teaching.

In January 2007 I became a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Since July 2009 I have been Director of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, where I do research and administration of science.

Founded in 1928, renovated in 1994, the Institut Henri Poincaré is funded by the CNRS and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie; it organizes events for the whole french and international community of mathematics and theoretical physics (thematic trimesters, seminars, graduate courses, ...).

My main research interests are in kinetic theory (especially Boltzmann equation and its variants; see my long review paper), and optimal transport and its applications (I wrote a book on that subject too; and then another book). More generally, I am fond of subjects which combine several (if not all) of the following themes: evolution partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics, probability theory, smooth and nonsmooth "metric" Riemannian geometry, and functional inequalities with geometric content.

Let's pompously call this a Public statement: Many friends have been worried that my research might be severely harmed by my responsibilities at the Institut Henri Poincaré. That is very kind, but be reassured people: with the excellent conditions I was offered, the amazing dedicated staff who works with me, and a bit of organization, I will handle this without sacrificing my research in any way.

I belong to the editorial boards of Inventiones Mathematicae, the Journal of Functional Analysis (JFA), the Journal of Mathematical Physics (JMP) and the Journal of Statistical Physics (JSP).

I proudly served on the boards of the Annals of Institute Henri Poincaré (Probability and Statistics) and the SIAM Journal for Mathematical Analysis (SIMA).

On this Homepage you will find links to:

My Curriculum Vitae, including a few family pictures,

and complete lists of publications with downloadable PDF files;

A brief presentation of my research, together with selected papers;

Some surveys, books and lecture notes which I wrote on my favourite topics;

Errata lists for the above-mentioned works;

Some lectures (seminars, colloquia, etc. some of them broad-audience, some more specialized);

Some unpolished lecture notes for students (mostly in french, some of them work in progress);

Downloadable versions of my PhD thesis and master's thesis;

A brief summary of my past Cours Peccot (May-June 2003)

Recent information, news or advertisement

From January to June 2009 I have been on leave at the Instiute for Advanced Study, Princeton. This was the opportunity to develop two large-scale research projects; the first one on the Landau damping in collaboration with Clément Mouhot, and the second one on the global geometry of the tangent cut locus near the round sphere, in collaboration with Alessio Figalli and Ludovic Rifford.
My agenda for the near future (last updated July 4, 2009)

To decorate this Homepage I put here the portraits of some of my scientifical heroes. Can you name them all?

Solutions and comments

My first intention was to change this list from time to time, but hey, I am a father of two, and it is soo difficult to find time to do anything...