Bernard Morin
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Bernard Morin is a French mathematician, especially a topologist, born in 1931, who is now retired. He has been blind since age 6, but his blindness did not prevent him from having a successful career in mathematics.
Morin was a member of the group that first exhibited an eversion of the sphere, i.e. a homotopy (topological metamorphosis) which starts with a sphere and ends with the same sphere but turned inside-out. (See Smale paradox.) He also discovered the Morin surface, which is a half-way model for the sphere eversion, and used it to prove a lower bound on the number of steps needed to turn a sphere inside out.
He discovered the first parametrization of Boy's surface (earlier used as a half-way model) in 1978. His graduate student, François Apéry, later discovered another parametrization of Boy's surface.
Morin worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Most of his career, though, he spent at the University of Strasbourg.
Missing image
MorinSurfaceCrossView.PNG
Image:MorinSurfaceCrossView.PNG
- Morin's surface.
External link
- Photos of Morin (http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Photos/MathArt/Maubeuge/dickson-morin/) with stereolithography models of sphere eversion.
- The World of Blind Mathematicians (http://www.ams.org/notices/200210/comm-morin.pdf), PDF file at the American Mathematical Society's website.