Alain Chenciner

Alain Chenciner (born 23 October 1943, in Villeneuve-sur-Lot) is a French mathematician, specializing in dynamical systems with applications to celestial mechanics.

In 1971 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris XI under Jean Cerf with thesis Sur la géométrie des strates de petites codimensions de l'espace des fonctions différentiables réelles sur une variété[1] (Chenciner's thesis defense involved Henri Cartan, Laurent Schwartz and René Thom).

Chenciner, with Jacques Laskar, founded in 1992 the research group astronomie et systèmes dynamiques at the Observatory of Paris.

In 2002 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing and gave a talk Action minimizing solutions of the Newtonian n-body problem: from homology to symmetry.

He gave a eulogy on 9 July 2012 at the Montparnasse Cemetery to mark the centenary of the death of Henri Poincaré.