Le grand mathématicien Roger Apéry, décédé en 1995, avait été membre du Parti Radical-Socialiste Camille Pelletan, créé en 1934 par Gabriel Cudenet. Voici sa biographie, en anglais, réalisée par Marc Prevost <prevost@lma.univ-littoral.fr> d'après un texte de Y. Hellegouarch
Professor Roger Apéry , a prominent figure of the University of CAEN (France), passed away after a prolonged illness on December 1994. Roger Apéry was born in ROUEN in 1916 of a mother of Flemisch origin and a Greek father who had volunteered to serve in the French army in 1914 in order to obtain French nationality.
After brilliant studies at the "Lycee Louis Le Grand" where he distinguished himself several times in the "Concours general" , Roger Apéry was placed second among entrants at the ENS in 1936 and came first at the "Agregation de Mathematiques".
Called up for the army in 1939 and a prisoner of war in June 1940, he was released in October 1941 for health reasons. Appointed assistant lecturer at the Sorbonne in 1942 , he joined a group of ENS students in the French Resistance and became the leader of the National Front at the ENS.
In 1947 he defended his thesis in algebraic geometry "à l'italienne" under the supervision of Paul Dubreil and was appointed Lecturer at Rennes(the youngest ever in France). From 1949 until he retired in 1986 , Roger Apéry was a Professor at the University of CAEN where he created a research team on algebra and number theory.
At the end of his career in 1977 , he made a sensational discovery which was to make his name famous throughout the world. His proof of the irrationality of the sum of the inverse of the cubes of integers by an exceptionally clever method worthier of his Greek ancestors than of Bourbaki, made him a legend.
In addition to a keen sense of provocation,Roger Apéry enjoyed playing the piano - his mother had taught him , chess,philosophy and ... politics. Having joined the Camille Pelletan Radical Party at a young age after the riots of 1934 , he resigned after Munich.Then , at the end of the war, he once again became an active party member with Pierre Mendes-France.
As president of the Calvados Radical Party in the 60's he remained active in politics until May 68. Being opposed to the reforms instituted after 68 by Edgar Faure , he abandoned political life when he realized University life was running against the tradition he had always upheld.
Many researchers have worked with the so-called Apéry sequences to rediscover his proof of the irrationality of Zeta(3) ( See H.Cohen,A. Van Den Poorten, E.Reyssat,F.Beukers,M.Prevost), to generalize his recurrence relation in connexion with Numerical Analysis and Orthogonal Polynomials (R.Askey,J.A. Wilson,A.L.Schmidt) or to study the congruence properties of Ap\`ery numbers ( P.T.Young,Y.Mimura,I.Gessel,S.Chowla).
From a text by Y. Hellegouarch.
UNE AUTRE PAGE CONSACREE A ROBERT APERY, MATHEMATICIEN RADICAL, CLIQUEZ ICI
LISEZ LE TEMOIGNAGE DE RENE BOSDEDORE SUR LE PARTI CAMILLE PELLETAN EN CLIQUANT ICI